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THE 
AMERICAN LANGUAGE 




OF THE FIRST EDITION OF 
THIS BOOK FIFTEEN HUNDRED 
COPIES HAVE BEEN PRINTED 
AND THE TYPE DISTRIBUTED 
THIS IS NUMBER 



The Shadow 
on the Dial 
and other Essays 



Edited by 

S. O, HOWES. 




The Shadow on the Dial 
and other Essays ^ ^^ 

By 
AMBROSE BIERCE 




SAN FRANCISCO 

A. M. ROBERTSON 

1909 










\^ 



0^ 



Copyright 1909 

By 

A. M. ROBERTSON 



f^8C3iv«d from 
CopyrifTht Offfce. 
iUN 2! 1910 









© 






Cla. A, 






JUL 


19 


1909 










Printed and Bound by 

The Hicks-Judd Company 

San Francisco 



A Note by the Author 




[T WAS expected that this book 
would be included in my "Col- 
lected Works" now in course of 
publication, but unforeseen delay 
in the date of publication has made this impos- 
sible. The selection of its contents was not 
made by me, but the choice has my approval 
and the publication my authority. 

AMBROSE BIERCE. 



Washington, D. C, March 14, 1909. 



The Shadotp on the Dial and other Essay^s 



Contents 



Pa«e 

Preface ix 

The Shadow on the Dial ....... 1 

Civilization ......... 23 

The Game of Politics . . . . . . . . 41 

Some Features of the Law 61 

Arbitration 85 

Industrial Discontent ........ 95 

Crime and its Correctives . . . . . . .113 

The Death Penalty 125 

Religion 141 

Immortality 159 

Opportunity . . . . . . . . . .167 

Charity 173 

Emancipated Woman . . . . . . . .179 

The Opposing Sex ........ 187 

The American Sycophant ....... 205 

A Dissertation on Dogs . . . . . . . 217 

The Ancestral Bond 231 

The Right to Work 237 

The Right to Take Oneself Off 243 



VU 




Preface 

HE note of prophecy! It sounds sharp and clear 
in many a vibrant line, in many a sonorous sen- 
tence of the essays herein collected for the first 
time. Written for various Califomian journals 
and periodicals and extending over a period of more than a 
quarter of a century, these opinions and reflections express the 
refined judgment of one who has seen, not as through a glass 
darkly, the trend of events. And having seen the portentous 
effigy that we are making of the Liberty our fathers created, 
he has written of it in English that is the despair of those who, 
thinking less clearly, escape not the pitfalls of diffuseness and 
obscurity. For Mr. Bierce, as did Flaubert, holds that the 
right word is necessary for the conveyance of the right thought 
and his sense of word values rarely betrays him into error. But 
with an odd — I might almost say perverse — indifference to his 
own reputation, he has allowed these writings to lie fallow in 
the old files of papers, while others, possessing the knack of 
publicity, years later tilled the soil with some degree of success. 
President Hadley, of Yale University, before the Candle 
Light Club of Denver, January 8, 1900, advanced, as novel 
and original, ostracism as an effective punishment of social 
highwaymen. This address attracted widespread attention, 
and though Professor Hadley's remedy has not been generally 
adopted it is regarded as his own. Mr. Bierce wrote in "The 
Examiner," January 20, 1895, as follows: "We are plun- 
dered because we have no particular aversion to plunderers. 

IX 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

The *pi^edatory rich* (to use Mr. Stead's felicitous term) put 
their hands into our pockets because they know that, virtually, 
none of us will refuse to take their hands in our own after- 
wards, in friendly salutation. If notorious rascality entailed 
social outlawry the only rascals would be those properly — and 
proudly — belonging to the 'criminal class.' " 

Again, Edwin Markham has attracted to himself no little 
attention by advocating the application of the Golden Rule in 
temporal affairs as a cure for evils arising from industrial dis- 
content. In this he, too, has been anticipated. Mr. Bierce, 
writing in "The Examiner," March 25, 1894, said: "When 
a people would avert want and strife, or having them, would 
restore plenty and peace, this noble commandment offers the 
only means — all other plans for safety and relief are as vain as 
dreams, and as empty as the crooning of fools. And, behold, 
here it is: 'All things whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them.* " 

Rev. Charles M. Sheldon created a nine days* wonder, or 
rather a seven, by conducting for a week a newspaper as he 
conceived Christ would have done. Some years previously, 
June 28, 1 896, to be exact, the author of these essays wrote : 
"That is my ultimate and determining test of right — 'What, 
under the circumstances, would Christ have done?' — the Christ 
of the New Testament, not the Christ of the commentators, 
theologians, priests and parsons." 

I am sure that Mr. Bierce does not begrudge any of these 
gentlemen the acclaim they have received by enunciating his 
ideas, and I mention the instances here merely to forestall the 
filing of any other claim to priority. 

The essays cover a wide range of subjects, embracing 
among other things government, dreams, writers of dialect, and 

X 



Preface 

dogs, and always the author's point of view is fresh, original 
and non-Philistine. Whether one cares to agree with him or 
not, one will find vast entertainment in his wit that illuminates 
v^th lightning flashes all he touches. Other qualities I forbear 
allusion to, having already encroached too much upon the time 
of the reader. 

S. O. HOWES. 



XI 



The Shadow 
on the Dial 



The Shadow on the Dial 




I. 

HERE Is a deal of confusion and uncertainty in 
the use of the words "Socialist," "Anarchist," 
and "Nihilist." Even the '1st himself commonly 
knows with as little accuracy what he is as the 
rest of us know why he is. The Socialist believes that most 
human affairs should be regulated and managed by the State — 
the Government — that is to say, the majority. Our own 
system has many Socialistic features and the trend of republican 
government is all that way. The Anarchist is the kind of 
lunatic who believes that all crime is the effect of laws for- 
bidding it — as the pig that breaks into the kitchen garden is 
created by the dog that chews its ear! The Anarchist favors 
abolition of all law and frequently belongs to an organization 
that secures his allegiance by solemn oaths and dreadful pen- 
alties. "Nihilism" is a name given by Turgenieff to the general 
body of Russian discontent which finds expression in antagon- 
izing authority and killing authorities. Constructive politics 
would seem, as yet, to be a cut above the Nihilist's intelligence; 
he is essentially a destructionary. He is so diligently engaged 
in unweeding the soil that he has not given a thought to what 
he will grow there. Nihilism may be described as a policy of 
assassination tempered by reflections upon Siberia. American 
sympathy with it is the offspring of an unholy union between 
the tongue of a liar and the ear of a dupe. 

3 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

Upon examination it will be seen that political dissent, 
when it takes any form more coherent than the mere brute dis- 
satisfaction of a mind that does not know what it wants to want, 
finds expression in one of but two ways — in Socialism or in 
Anarchism. Whatever methods one may think will best sub- 
stitute for a system gradually evolved from our needs and our 
natures a system existing only in the minds of dreamers, one is 
bound to choose between these two dreams. Yet such is the 
intellectual delinquency of many who most strenuously 
denounce the system that we have that we not infrequently find 
the same man advocating in one breath. Socialism, in the next. 
Anarchism. Indeed, few of these sons of darkness know that 
even as coherent dreams the two are incompatible. With 
Anarchy triumphant the Socialist would be a thousand years 
further from realization of his hope than he is today. Set up 
Socialism on a Monday and on Tuesday the country would 
be en fete, gaily hunting down Anarchists. There would be 
little difficulty in trailing them, for they have not so much sense 
as a deer, which, running down the wind, sends its tell-tale 
fragrance on before. 

Socialism and Anarchism are the two extremes of political 
thought; they are parts of the same thing, in the sense that the 
terminal points of a road are parts of the same road. Between 
them, about midway, lies the system that we have the happiness 
to endure. It is a "blend" of Socialism and Anarchism in 
about equal parts : all that is not one is the other. Everything 
serving the common interest, or looking to the welfare of the 
whole people, is socialistic, in the strictest sense of the word 
as understood by the Socialist. Whatever tends to private 
advantage or advances an individual or class interest at 
the expense of a public one, is anarchistic. Cooperation is 



The Shadow on the Dial 



Socialism; competition is Anarchism. Competition carried to 
its logical conclusion (which only cooperation prevents or can 
prevent) would leave no law in force, no property possible, no 
life secure. 

Of course the words "cooperation" and "competition" are 
not here used in a merely industrial and commercial sense ; they 
are intended to cover the whole field of human activity. Two 
voices singing a duet — that is cooperation — Socialism. Two 
voices singing each a different tune and trying to drown each 
other — that is competition — Anarchism: each is a law unto 
itself — that is to say, it is lawless. Everything that ought to 
be done the Socialist hopes to do by associated endeavor, as an 
army wins battles; Anarchism is socialistic in its means only: 
by cooperation it tries to render cooperation impossible — com- 
bines to kill combination. Its method says to its purpose: 
"Thou fool!" 



II. 



Everything foretells the doom of authority. TTie killing 
of kings is no new industry ; it is as ancient as the race. Always 
and everywhere persons in high place have been the assassin*s 
prey. We have ourselves lost three Presidents by murder, and 
will doubtless lose many another before the book of American 
history is closed. If anything is new in this activity of the 
regicide it is found in the choice of victims. TTie contemporary 
"avenger" slays, not the merely great, but the good and the 
inoffensive — an American President who had struck the chains 
from millions of slaves; a Russian Czar who against the will 
and work of his own powerful nobles had freed their serfs; a 
French President from whom the French people had received 

5 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

nothing but good ; a powerless Austrian Empress, whose weight 
of sorrows touched the world to tears ; a blameless Italian King 
beloved of his people ; such is a part of the recent record of the 
regicide whose every entry is a tale of infamy unrelieved by 
one circumstance of justice, decency or good intention. And 
the great Brazilian liberator died in exile. 

This recent uniformity of malevolence in the choice of 
victims is not without significance. It points unmistakably to 
two facts : first, that the selections are made, not by the assassins 
themselves, but by some central control inaccessible to indi- 
vidual preference and unaffected by the fortunes of its instru- 
ments; second, that there is a constant purpose to manifest an 
antagonism, not to any individual ruler, but to rulers; not to 
any system of government, but to Government. It is a war, 
not upon those in authority, but upon Authority. The issue 
is defined, the alignment made, the battle set: Chaos against 
Order, Anarchy against Law. 

M. Vaillant, the French gentleman who lacked a "good 
opinion of the law," but was singularly rich in the faith that by 
means of gunpowder and flying nails humanity could be 
brought into a nearer relation with reason, righteousness and 
the will of God, is said to have been nearly devoid of a nose. 
Of this affliction M. Vaillant made but slight account, as was 
natural, seeing that but for a brief season did he need even so 
much of nose as remained to him. Yet before its effacement 
by premature disruption of his own petard it must have had a 
certain value to him — ^he would not wantonly have renounced 
it ; and had he foreseen its extinction by the bomb the iron views 
of that controversial device would probably have been denied 
expression. Albeit (so say the scientists) doomed to eventual 
elimination from the scheme of being, and to the Anarchist even 

6 



The Shadow on the Dial 



now something of an accusing conscience, the nose is indu- 
bitably an excellent thing in man. 

This brings us to consideration of the human nose as a 
measure of human happiness — not the size of it, but its num- 
bers; its frequent or infrequent occurrence upon the human 
face. We have grown so accustomed to the presence of this 
feature that we take it as a matter of course ; its absence is one 
of the most notable phenomena of our observation — "an occa- 
sion long to be remembered," as the society reporter hath it. 
Yet "abundant testimony showeth" that but two or three 
centuries ago noseless men and women were so common all 
over Europe as to provoke but little comment when seen and 
(in their disagreeable way) heard. They abounded in all the 
various walks of life: there were honored burgomasters with- 
out noses, wealthy merchants, great scholars, artists, teachers. 
Amongst the humbler classes nasal destitution was almost as 
frequent as pecuniary — in the humblest of all the most com- 
mon of all. Writing in the thirteenth century, Salsius men- 
tions the retainers and servants of certain Suabian noblemen as 
having hardly a whole ear among them — for until a compara- 
tively recent period man's tenure of his ears was even more 
precarious than that of his nose. In 1436, when a Bavarian 
woman, Agnes Bemaurian, wife of Duke Albert the Pious, 
was dropped off the bridge at Prague, she persisted in rising to 
the surface and trying to escape; so the executioner gave him- 
self the trouble to put a long pole into her hair and hold her 
under. A contemporary account of the matter hints that her 
disorderly behavior at so solemn a moment was due to the 
pain caused by removal of her nose; but as her execution was 
by order of her own father it seems more probable that "the 
extreme penalty of the law" was not imposed. Without a 

7 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

doubt, though, possession of a nose was an uncommon (and 
rather barren) distinction in those days among "persons 
designated to assist the executioner,** as the condemned were 
civilly called. Nor, as already said, was it any too common 
among persons not as yet consecrated to that service: "Few," 
says Salsius, "have two noses, and many have none." 

Man*s firmer grasp upon his nose in this our day and gen- 
eration is not altogether due to invention of the handkerchief. 
The genesis and development of his right to his own nose have 
been accompanied with a corresponding advance in the pos- 
sessory rights all along the line of his belongings — ^his ears, his 
fingers and toes, his skin, his bones, his wife and her young, 
his clothes and his labor — everything that is (and that once 
was not) his. In Europe and America today these things can 
not be taken away from even the humblest and poorest without 
somebody wanting to "know the reason why.*' In every de- 
cade the nation that is most powerful upon the seas incurs 
voluntarily a vast expense of blood and treasure in suppressing 
a slave trade which in no way is injurious to her interests, nor 
to the interests of any but the slaves. 

So "Freedom broadens slowly down,** and today even 
the lowliest incapable of all Nature's aborted has a nose that 
he dares to call his own and bite off at his own sweet will. 
Unfortunately, with an unthinkable fatuity we permit him to 
be told that but for the very agencies that have put him in pos- 
session he could successfully assert a God-given and world-old 
right to the noses of others. At present the honest fellow is 
mainly engaged in refreshing himself upon his own nose, con- 
suming that comestible with avidity and precision; but the 
Vaillants, Ravechols, Mosts and Willeys are pointing his 
appetite to other snouts than his, and inspiring him with rhino- 

8 



The Shadow on the Dial 



phagic ambition. Meantime the rest of us are using those im- 
periled organs to snore with. 

'Tis a fine, resoncint and melodious snore, but it is not 
going to last: there is to be a rude awakening. We shall one 
day get our eyes open to the fact that scoundrels like Vaillant 
are neither few nor distant. We shall learn that our blind de- 
pendence upon the magic of words is a fatuous error; that the 
fortuitous arrangement of consonants cmd vowels which we 
worship as Liberty is of slight efficacy in disarming the lunatic 
brandishing a bomb. Liberty, indeed ! The murderous wretch 
loves it a deal better than we, and wants more of it. Liberty ! 
one almost sickens of the word, so quick and glib it is on every 
lip — so destitute of meaning. 

There is no such thing as abstract liberty; it is not even 
thinkable. If you ask me, "Do you favor liberty?" I reply, 
"Liberty for whom to do what?" Just now I distinctly favor 
the liberty of the law to cut off the noses of anarchists caught 
red-handed or red-tongued. If they go in for mutilation let 
them feel what it is like. If they are not satisfied with the 
way that things have been going on since the wife of Duke 
Albert the Pious was held under water with a pole, and since 
the servitors of the Suabian nobleman cherished their vesti- 
gial ears, it is to be presumed that they favor reversion to that 
happy state. There is grave objection, but if we must we 
will. Let us begin (with moderation) by reverting them. 

I favor mutilation for anarchists convicted of killing or in- 
citing to kill — mutilation followed by death. For those who 
merely deny the right and expediency of law, plain mutilation — 
which might advantageously take the form of removal of the 
tongue. Why not? Where is the injustice? Surely he who 
denies men's right to make laws will not invoke the laws that 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

they have wickedly made! That were to say that they must 
not protect themselves, yet are bound to protect him. What! 
if I beat him will he call the useless and mischievous con- 
stabulary? If I draw out his tongue shall he (in the sign- 
language) demand it back, and failing of restitution (for 
surely I should cut it clean away) shall he have the law on 
me — the naughty law, instrument of the oppressor? Why? 
that "goes neare to be fonny!" 

Two human beings can not live together in peace without 
laws — laws innumerable. Everything that either, in considera- 
tion of the other's wish or welfare, abstains from is inhibited by 
law, tacit or expressed. If there were in all the world none 
but they — if neither had come with any sense of obligation 
toward the other, both clean from creation, with nothing but 
brains to direct their conduct — every hour would evolve an 
understanding, that is to say, a law; every act would suggest 
one. They would have to agree not to kill nor harm each 
other. They must arrange their work and all their activities to 
secure the best advantage. These arrangements, agreements, 
understandings — what are they but laws? To live without 
law is to live alone. Every family is a miniature State with a 
complicate system of laws, a supreme authority and subordinate 
authorities down to the latest babe. And as he who is loudest 
in demanding liberty for himself is sternest in denying it to 
others, you may confidently go to the Maison Vaillant, or 
the Mosthaus, for a flawless example of the iron hand. 

Laws of the State are as faulty and as faultily administered 
as those of the Family. Most of them have to be speedily and 
repeatedly "amended," many repealed, and of those permitted 
to stand, the greater number fall into disuse and are forgotten. 
Those who have to be entrusted with the duty of administer- 

10 



The Shadow on the Dial 



ing them have all the limitations of intelligence and defects of 
character by which the rest of us also are distinguished from 
the angels. In the wise governor, the just judge, the honest 
sheriff or the patient constable we have as rare a phenomenon 
as the faultless father. The good God has not given us a 
special kind of men upon whom to devolve the duty of seeing 
to the observance of the understandings that we call laws. 
Like all else that men do, this work is badly done. The best 
that we can hope for through all the failures, the injustice, the 
disheartening damage to individual rights and interests, is a 
fairly good general result, enabling us to walk abroad among 
our fellows unafraid, to meet even the tribesmen from another 
valley without too imminent peril of braining and evisceration. 
Of that small security the Anarchist would deprive us. But 
without that nothing is of value and we shall be willing to 
renounce all. Let us begin by depriving ourselves of the 
Anarchist. 

Our system of civilization being the natural outgrowth of 
our wretched moral and intellectual natures, is open to criticism 
and subject to revision. Our laws, being of human origin, 
are faulty and their application is disappointing. Dissent, 
dissatisfaction, deprecation, proposals for a better system 
fortified with better laws more intelligently administered — 
these are permissible and should be welcome. The Socialist 
(when he is not carried away by zeal to pool issues with the 
Anarchist) has that in him which it does us good to hear. He 
may be wrong in all else, yet right in showing us wherein we 
ourselves are wrong. Anyhow, his mission is amendment, and 
so long as his paths are peace he has the right to walk therein, 
exhorting as he goes. The French Communist who does not 
preach Petroleum and It rectified is to be regarded with more 

11 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

than amusement, more than compassion. There is room for 
him and his fad; there are hospitable ears for his boast that 
Jesus Christ would have been a Communist if there had been 
Communes. They really did not "know everything down in 
Judee." But for the Anarchist, whose aim is not amendment, 
but destruction — ^not welfare to the race, but mischief to a 
part of it — not happiness for the future, but revenge for the 
past — for that animal there should be no close season, for 
that savage, no reservation. Society has not the right to grant 
life to one who denies the right to live. The protagonist of 
reversion to the regime of lacking noses should lack a nose. 

It is difficult to say if the bomb-thrower, actual or potential, 
is greater as scoundrel or fool. Suppose his aim is to compel 
concession by terror. Can not the brute observe at each of his 
exploits a tightening of "the reins of power?" Through the 
necessity of guarding against him the mildest governments are 
becoming despotic, the most despotic more despotic. Does 
he suppose that "the rulers of the earth" are silly enough to 
make concessions that will not insure their safety? Can he give 
them security? 

III. 

Of all the wild asses that roam the plain, the wildest wild 
ass that roams the plain is indubitably the one that lifts his 
voice and heel against that socialism known as "public owner- 
ship of public utilities," on the ground of "principle." There 
may be honest, and in some degree intelligent, opposition on the 
ground of expediency. Many persons whom it is a pleasure 
to respect believe that a Government railway, for example, 
would be less efficiently managed than the same railway in 

12 



The Shadow on the Dial 



private hands, and that poHtical dangers lurk in the proposal 
so enormously to increase the number of Federal employes as 
Government ownership of railways would entail. They think, 
in other words, that the policy is inexpedient. It is a duty 
to reason with them, which, as a rule, one can do without being 
insulted. But the chap who greets the proposal with a howl 
of derision as "Socialism!" is not a respectable opponent. 
Eyes he has, but he sees not ; ears — oh I very abundant ears — 
but he hears not the still, small voice of history nor the still 
smaller voice of common sense. 

Obviously to those who, having eyes, do see, public ovmer- 
ship of anything is a step in the direction of Socialism, for 
perfect Socialism means public ownership of everything. But 
"principle" has nothing to do with it. The principle of public 
ownership is already accepted and established. It has no visible 
opponents except in the camp of the Anarchists, and fewer 
of them are visible there than soap and water would reveal. 
Antagonists of the principle of Socialism lost their fight when 
the first human government held the dedicatory exercises of a 
Cave of Legislation. Since then the only question about the 
matter has been how far the extension of Socialism is expedient. 
Some would draw the limiting line at one place, some at 
another; but only a fool thinks there can be government with- 
out it, or good government without a great deal of it. (TTie 
fact that we have always had a great deal of it, yet never had 
good government, affirms nothing that it is worth while to con- 
sider.) The word-worn example of our Postal Department is 
only one of a thousand instances of pure Socialism. If it did 
not exist, how bitter an opposition a proposal to establish it 
would evoke from Adversaries of the Red Rag! The Gov- 
ernment builds and operates bridges with general assent; but, 

13 



The ShadoVf on the Dial and other Essayfs 

as the late General Walker pointed out, it might under some 
circumstances be more economical, or better otherwise, to 
build and operate a ferry boat, which is a floating bridge. But 
that would be opposed as rank Socialism. 

The truth is that the men and women of "principle" are a 
pretty dangerous class, generally speaking — and they are 
generally speaking. It is they that hamper us in every war. It 
is they who, preventing concentration and regulation of un- 
abolishable evils, promote their distribution and liberty. Moral 
principles are pretty good things — for the young and those not 
well grounded in goodness. If one have an impediment in his 
thought, or is otherwise unequal to emergencies as they arise, it 
is safest to be provided beforehand with something to refer to in 
order that a right decision may be made without taking thought. 
But "spirits of a purer fire" prefer to decide each question as 
it comes up, and to act upon the merits of the case, unbound 
and unpledged. With a quick intelligence, a capable con- 
science and a habit of doing right automatically one has little 
need to burden one's mind and memory with a set of solemn 
principles formulated by owlish philosophers who do not 
happen to know that what is right is merely what, in the long 
run and with regard to the greater number of cases, is expedi- 
ent. Principle is not always an infallible guide. For illustra- 
tion, it is not always expedient — that is, for the good of all 
concerned — to tell the truth, to be entirely just or merciful, to 
pay a debt. I can conceive a case in which it would be right 
to assassinate one's neighbor. Suppose him to be a desperate 
scoundrel of a chemist who has devised a means of setting the 
atmosphere afire. The man who should go through life on an 
inflexible line of principle would border his path with a havoc 
of human happiness. 

14 



The Shadow on the Dial 



What one may think perfect one may not always think 
desirable. By "perfect" one may mean merely complete, and 
the word was so used in my reference to Socialism. I am 
not myself an advocate of "perfect Socialism," but as to Gov- 
ernment ownership of railways, there is doubtless a good deal 
to be said on both sides. One argument in its favor appears 
decisive; under a system subject to popular control the law of 
gravitation would be shorn of its preeminence as a means of 
removing personal property from the baggage car, and so far 
as it is applicable to that work might even be repealed. 

IV. 

When M. Casimir-Perier resigned the French Presidency 
there were those who regarded the act as weak, cowardly, 
undutiful and otherwise censurable. It seems to me the act, 
not of a feeble man, but of a strong one — not that of a 
coward, but that of a gentleman. Indeed, I hardly know 
where to look in history for an act more entirely gratifying to 
my sense of "the fitness of things" than this dignified notification 
to mankind that in consenting to serve one's country one does 
not relinquish the right to decent treatment — to immunity from 
factious opposition and abuse — to at least as much civil con- 
sideration as is due from the Church to the Devil. 

M. Casimir-Perier did not seek the Presidency of the 
French Republic; it was thrust upon him against his pro- 
testations by an apparently almost unanimous mandate of the 
French people in an emergency which it was thought that he 
was the best man to meet. That he met it with modesty and 
courage was testified without dissent. That he afterward did 
anything to forfeit the confidence and respect that he then in- 

15 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

spired is not true, and nobody believes it true. Yet in his 
letter of resignation he said, and said truly : 

"For the last six months a campaign of slander and insult 
has been going on against the army, magistrates. Parliament 
and hierarchical Chief of State, and this license to disseminate 
social hatred continues to be called 'the liberty of thought.* " 

And with a dignity to which it seems strange that any one 
could be insensible, he added: 

"The respect and ambition which I entertain for my 
country will not allow me to acknowledge that the servants 
of the country, and he who represents it in the presence of 
foreign nations, may be insulted every day." 

These are noble words. Have we any warrant for de- 
manding or expecting that men of clean life and character will 
devote themselves to the good of ingrates who pay, and in- 
grates who permit them to pay, in flung mud? It is hardly 
credible that among even those persons most infatuated by con- 
templation of their own merit as pointed out by their thrifty 
sycophants "the liberty of thought" has been carried to that 
extreme. The right of the State to demand the sacrifice of 
the citizen's life is a doctrine as old as the patriotism that con- 
cedes it, but the right to require him to forego his good name — 
that is something new under the sun. From nothing but the 
dunghill of modem democracy could so noxious a plant have 
sprung. 

"Perhaps in laying down my functions," said M. Casimir- 
Perier, "I shall have marked out a path of duty to those who 
are solicitous for the dignity, power and good name of France 
in the world." 

We may be permitted to hope that the lesson is wider than 
France and more lasting than the French Republic. It is time 

16 



The Shadow on the Dial 



that not only France but all other countries with "popular 
institutions" should learn that if they wish to command the 
services of men of honor they must accord them honorable 
treatment; the rule now is for the party to which they belong 
to give them a half-hearted support while suffering all other 
parties to slander and insult them. The action of the Presi- 
dent of the French Republic in these disgusting circumstances 
is exceptional and unusual only in respect of his courage in ex- 
pressly resenting his wrong. Everywhere the unreasonable 
complaint is heard that good men will not "go into politics;" 
everywhere the ignorant and malignant masses and their no 
less malignant and hardly less ignorant leaders and spokesmen, 
having sown the wind of reasonless obstruction and partisan 
vilification, are reaping the whirlwind of misrule. So far as 
concerns the public service, gentlemen are mostly on a strike 
against introduction of the mud-machine. This high-minded 
political workman, Casimir-Perier, never showed to so noble 
advantage as in gathering up his tools and walking out. 

It may be, and a million times has been, urged that absten- 
tion from activity in public affairs by men of brains and charac- 
ter leaves the business of government in the hands of the in- 
capable and the vicious. In whose hands, pray, in a republic, 
does it logically belong? What does the theory of "repre- 
sentative government" affirm? What is the lesson of every 
netherward extension of the suffrage? What do we mean by 
permitting it to "broaden slowly down" to lower and lower 
intelligences and moralities? — what but that stupidity and vice, 
equally with virtue and wisdom, are entitled to a voice in 
political affairs, a finger in the public pie? 

A person that is fit to vote is fit to be voted for. He who 
is competent for the high and difficult function of choosing an 

17 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

officer of the State is competent to serve the State as an officer. 
To deny him the right is illogical and unjust. Participation in 
Government can not be at the same time a privilege and a duty, 
and he who claims it as a privilege must not speak of another's 
renunciation (whereby himself is more highly privileged) as 
"shirking." With every retirement from politics increased 
power passes to those who remain. Shall they protest? Shall 
they, also, who have retired? Who else is to protest? The 
complaint of "incivism" would be more rational if there were 
some one by whom it could reasonably be made. 

My advice to slandered officials has ever been : "Resign.** 
The public officials of this favored country. Heaven be 
thanked, are infrequently slandered : they are, as a rule, so bad 
that calumniation is a compliment. Our best men, with here 
and there an exception, have been driven out of public life, or 
made afraid to enter it. Even our spasmodic efforts at reform 
fail ludicrously for lack of leaders unaffiliated with "the thing 
to be reformed." Unless attracted by the salary, why should 
a gentleman "aspire" to the Presidency of the United States? 
During his canvass (and he is expected to "run," not merely to 
"stand") he will have from his own party a support that should 
make him blush, and from all the others an opposition that will 
stick at nothing to accomplish his satisfactory defamation. 
After his election his partition and allotment of the loaves and 
fishes will estrange an important and thenceforth implacable 
faction of his following without appeasing the animosity of any 
one else ; and during his entire service his sky will be dark with 
a flight of dead cats. At the finish of his term the utmost that 
he can expect in the way of reward not expressible in terms of 
the national currency is that not much more than one-half of his 
countrymen will believe him a scoundrel to the end of their 
days. 18 



The Shadow on the Dial 



V. 

The kind of government that we have seems to me one of 
the worst kinds extant. A government that does not protect 
life is a flat failure, no matter what else it may do. Life being 
almost universally regarded as the most precious possession, its 
security is the first and highest essential — not the life of him 
who takes life, but the life which is exposed defenceless to his 
hateful hand. In no country in the world, civilized or savage, 
is life so insecure as in this. In no country in the world is mur- 
der held in so light reprobation. In no battle of modern times 
have so many lives been taken as are lost annually in the United 
States through public indifference to the crime of homicide — 
through disregard of law, through bad government. If Ameri- 
can self-government, with its ten thousand homicides a year, is 
good government, there is no such thing as bad. Self-govern- 
ment! What monstrous nonsense! Who governs himself 
needs no government, has no governor, is not governed. If 
government has any meaning it means the restraint of the many 
by the few — the subordination of numbers to brains. It means 
the determined denial to the masses of the right to cut their own 
throats. It means the grasp and control of all the social forces 
and material enginery — a vigilant censorship of the press, a 
firm hand upon the church, keen supervision of public meetings 
and public amusements, command of the railroads, telegraph 
and all means of communication. It means, in short, the ability 
to make use of all the beneficent influences of enlightenment 
for the good of the people, and to array all the powers of civili- 
zation against civilization's natural enemies — the people. Gov- 
ernment like this has a thousand defects, but it has one merit: 
it is government. 

19 



The ShadoTv on the Dial and other Essays 

Despotism? Yes. It is the despotisms of the world that 
have been the conservators of civilization. It is the despot who, 
most powerful for mischief, is alone powerful for good. It is 
conceded that government is necessary — even by the "fierce 
democracies" that madly renounce it. But in so far as govern- 
ment is not despotic it is not government. In Europe for the 
last one hundred years, the tendency of all government has been 
liberalization. The history of European politics during that 
period is a history of renunciation by the rulers and assumption 
by the ruled. Sovereign after sovereign has surrendered pre- 
rogative after prerogative ; the nobility privilege after privilege. 
Mark the result: society honeycombed with treason; property 
menaced with partition; assassination studied as a science and 
practiced as an art; everywhere powerful secret organizations 
sworn to demolish the social fabric that the slow centuries have 
but just erected and unmindful that themselves will perish in 
the wreck. No heart in Europe can beat tranquilly under 
clean linen. Such is the gratitude, such is the wisdom, such 
the virtue of "The Masses." In 1 863 Alexander II of Russia 
freed 25,000,000 serfs. In 1879 they had killed him and all 
joined the conspirators. 

That ancient and various device, "a republican form of gov- 
ernment," appears to be too good for all the peoples of the earth 
excepting one. It is partly successful in Switzerland ; in France 
and America, where the majority is composed of persons hav- 
ing dark understandings and criminal instincts, it has broken 
down. In our case, as in every case, the momentum of suc- 
cessful revolution carried us too far. We rebelled against 
tyranny and having overthrown it, overthrew also the govern- 
mental form in which it had happened to be manifest. In 
their anger and their triumph our good old gran'thers acted 

20 



The Shadow on the Dial 



somewhat in the spirit of the Irishman who cudgeled the dead 
snake until nothing was left of it, in order to make it "sinsible 
of its desthruction.'* They meant it all, too, the honest souls! 
For a long time after the setting up of the republic the republic 
meant active hatred to kings, nobles, aristocracies. It was held, 
and rightly held, that a nobleman could not breathe in America 
— that he left his title and his privileges on the ship that brought 
him over. Do we observe anything of that in this generation? 
On the landing of a foreign king, prince or nobleman — even 
a miserable "knight" — do we not execute sycophantic genu- 
flexions? Are not our newspapers full of flamboyant descrip- 
tions and qualming adulation? Nay, does not our President 
himself — successor to Washington and Jefferson! — greet and 
entertain the "nation's guest"? Is not every American young 
woman crazy to mate with a male of title? Does all this rep- 
resent no retrogression? — is it not the backward movement of 
the shadow on the dial? Doubtless the republican idea has 
struck strong roots into the soil of the two Americas, but he 
who rightly considers the tendencies of events, the causes that 
bring them about and the consequences that flow from them, 
will not be hot to affirm the perpetuity of republican institutions 
in the Western Hemisphere. Between their inception and their 
present stage of development there is scarcely the beat of a 
pendulum; and already, by corruption and lawlessness, the 
people of both continents, with all their diversities of race and 
character, have shown themselves about equally unfit. To 
become a nation of scoundrels all that any people needs is 
opportunity, and what we are pleased to call by the impossible 
name of "self-government" supplies it. 

The capital defect of republican government is inability to 
repress internal forces tending to disintegration. It does not 

21 



The ShadoTi} on the Dial and other Essays 

take long for a "self-governed" people to learn that it is not 
really governed — that an agreement enforcible by nobody but 
the parties to it is not binding. We are learning this very 
rapidly: we set aside our laws whenever we please. The 
sovereign power — the tribunal of ultimate jurisdiction — is a 
mob. If the mob is large enough (it need not be very large) , 
even if composed of vicious tramps, it may do as it will. It 
may destroy property and life. It may without proof of guilt 
inflict upon individuals torments unthinkable by fire and flay- 
ing, mutilations that are nameless. It may call men, women 
and children from their beds and beat them to death with 
cudgels. In the light of day it may assail the very strongholds 
of law in the heart of a populous city, and assassinate prisoners 
of whose guilt it knows nothing. And these things — observe, 
O victims of kings — are habitually done. One would as well 
be at the mercy of one's sovereign as of one's neighbor. 

For generations we have been charming ourselves with the 
magic of words. When menaced by some exceptionally 
monstrous form of the tyranny of numbers we have closed our 
eyes and murmured, "Liberty." When armed Anarchists 
threaten to quench the fires of civilization in a sea of blood we 
prate of the protective power of "free speech." If, 

"girt about by friends or foes, 
A man may speak the thing he will," 

we fondly fancy that the thing he will speak is harmless — that 
immunity disarms his tongue of its poison, his thought of its 
infection. With a fatuity that would be incredible without the 
testimony of observation, we hold that an Anarchist free to go 
about making proselytes, free to purchase arms, free to drill 
and parade and encourage his dupes with a demonstration of 

22 



The Shadow on the Dial 



their numbers and power, is less mischievous than an Anarchist 
with a shut mouth, a weaponless hand and under surveillance 
of the police. The Anarchist himself is persuaded of the 
superiority of our plan of dealing with him; he likes it and 
comes over in quantity, impesting the political atmosphere with 
the "sweltered venom" engendered by centuries of oppression — 
comes over here, where he is not oppressed, and sets up as op- 
pressor. His preferred field of malefaction is the country that 
is most nearly anarchical. He comes here, partly to better 
himself under our milder institutions, partly to secure immunity 
while conspiring to destroy them. There is thunder in Europe, 
but if the storm ever break it is in America that the lightning 
will fall, for here is a great vortex into which the decivilizing 
agencies are pouring without obstruction. Here gather the 
eagles to the feast, for the quarry is defenceless. Here is no 
power in government, no government. Here an enemy of order 
is thought to be least dangerous when suffered to preach and 
arm in peace. And here is nothing between him and his task 
of supervision — no pampered soldiery to repress his rising, no 
iron authority to lay him by the heels. The militia is fraternal, 
the magistracy elective. Europe may hold out a little longer. 
The Great Powers may make what stage-play they will, but 
they are not maintaining their incalculable armaments for 
aggression upon one another, for protection from one another, 
nor for fun. These vast forces are purely constabular — crea- 
tures and creators of discontent — phenomena of decivilization. 
Eventually they will fraternize with Disorder or become them- 
selves Praetorian Guards more dangerous than the perils that 
have called them into existence. 

It is easy to forecast the first stages of the End's approach : 
Rioting. Disaffection of constabulary and troops. Subversion 

23 



The Shadorv on the Dial and other Essays 

of the Government. A policy of decapitation. Upthrust of 
the serviceable Anarchist. His prompt effacement by his vic- 
torious ally and natural enemy, the Socialist. Free minting and 
printing of money — to every citizen a shoulder-load of the lat- 
ter, to the printers a ton each. Divided counsels. Pande- 
monium. The man on horseback. Gusts of grape. ? 

Formerly the bearer of evil tidings was only slain; he is 
now ignored. The gods kept their secrets by telling them to 
Cassandra, whom no one would believe. I do not expect to be 
heeded. The crust of a volcano is electric, the fumes are nar- 
cotic; the combined sensation is delightful no end. I have 
looked at the dial of civilization ; I tell you the shadow is going 
back. That is of small importance to men of leisure, with wine- 
dipped wreaths upon their heads. They do not care to know 
the hour. 



24 



Civilization 



Civilization 



I. 




HE question "Does civilization civilize?" is a fine 
example of peiitio pnncipn', and decides itself in 
the affirmative ; for civilization must needs do that 
from the doing of which it has its name. But it 
is not necessary to suppose that he who propounds is either 
unconscious of his lapse in logic or desirous of digging a pitfall 
for the feet of those who discuss ; I take it he simply wishes to 
put the matter in an impressive way, and relies upon a certain 
degree of intelligence in the interpretation. 

Concerning uncivilized peoples we know but little except 
what we are told by travelers — who, speaking generally, can 
know very little but the fact of uncivilization as shown in ex- 
ternals and irrelevances, and are moreover, greatly given to 
lying. From the savages we hear very little. Judging them in 
all things by our own standards, in default of a knowledge of 
theirs, we necessarily condemn, disparage and belittle. One 
thing that civilization certainly has not done is to make us intel- 
ligent enough to understand that the opposite of a virtue is not 
necessarily a vice. Because we do not like the taste of one 
another it does not follow that the cannibal is a person of 
depraved appetite. Because, as a rule, we have but one wife 
and several mistresses each it is not certain that polygamy is 
everywhere — nor, for that matter, anywhere — either wrong or 
inexpedient. Our habit of wearing clothes does not prove that 
conscience of the body, the sense of shame, is charged with 

27 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essayjs 

a divine mandate; for like the conscience of the spirit it is the 
creature of what it seems to create: it comes to the habit of 
wearing clothes. And for those who hold that the purpose of 
civilization is morality it may be said that peoples which are 
the most nearly naked are, in our sense, the most nearly moral. 
Because the brutality of the civilized slave owners and dealers 
created a conquering sentiment against slavery it is not intelli- 
gent to assume that slavery is a maleficent thing amongst 
Oriental peoples (for example) where the slave is not op- 
pressed. Some of these same Orientals whom we are pleased 
to term half-civilized have no regard for truth. "Takest thou 
me for a Christian dog," said one of them, "that I should be the 
slave of my word?" So far as I can perceive the "Christian 
dog" is no more the slave of his word than the True Believer, 
and I think the savage — allowing for the fact that his inveracity 
has dominion over fewer things — as great a liar as either of 
them. For my part, I do not know what, in all circumstances, 
is right or wrong; but I know, if right, it is at least stupid to 
judge an uncivilized people by the standards of morality and 
intelligence set up by civilized ones. An infinitesimal propor- 
tion of civilized men do not, and there is much to be said for 
civilization if they are the product of it. 

Life in civilized countries is so complex that men there have 
more ways to be good than savages have, and more to be bad ; 
more to be happy, and more to be miserable. And in each 
way to be good or bad, their generally superior knowledge — 
their knowledge of more things — enables them to commit 
greater excesses than the savage could with the same oppor- 
tunity. The civilized philanthropist wreaks upon his fellow 
creatures a ranker philanthropy, the civilized scoundrel a 
sturdier rascality. And — splendid triumph of enlightenment! 

28 



Civilization 

— the two characters are, in civilization, commonly combined 
in one person. 

I know of no savage custom or habit of thought which has 
not its mate in civilized countries. For every mischievous or 
absurd practice of the natural man I can name you a dozen of 
the unnatural which are essentially the same. And nearly 
every custom of our barbarian ancestors in historic times sur- 
vives in some form today. We make ourselves look formidable 
in battle — for that matter, we fight. Our women paint their 
faces. We feel it obligatory to dress more or less alike, invent- 
ing the most ingenious reasons for it and actually despising and 
persecuting those who do not care to conform. Within the 
memory of living persons bearded men were stoned in the 
streets; and a clergyman in New York who wore his beard as 
Christ wore his, was put into jail and variously persecuted till 
he died. We bury our dead instead of burning them, yet every 
cemetery is set thick with urns. As there are no ashes for the 
urns we do not trouble ourselves to make them hollow, and we 
say their use is "emblematic." When, following the bent of 
our ancestral instincts, we go on, age after age, in the perform- 
ance of some senseless act which once had a use and meaning 
we excuse ourselves by calling it symbolism. Our "symbols" 
are merely survivals. We have theology and patriotism. We 
have all the savage's superstition. We propitiate and ingratiate 
by means of gifts. We shake hands. All these and hundreds 
of others of our practices are distinctly, in their nature and by 
their origin, savage. 

Civilization does not, I think, make the race any better. 
It makes men know more : and if knowledge makes them happy 
it is useful and desirable. The one purpose of every sane 
human being is to be happy. No one can have any other 

29 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essa})s 

motive than that. There is no such thing as unselfishness. We 
perform the most "generous" and "self-sacrificing" acts because 
we should be unhappy if we did not. We move on lines of least 
reluctance. Whatever tends to increase the beggarly sum of 
human happiness is worth having ; nothing else has any value. 

The cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization is a fine and 
beautiful structure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral. 
But it is built upon the bones and cemented with the blood of 
those whose part in all its pomp is that and nothing more. It 
cannot be reared in the generous tropics, for there the people 
will not contribute their blood and bones. The proposition 
that the average American workingman or European peasant 
is "better off" than the South Sea Islander, lolling under a palm 
and drunk with over-eating, will not bear a moment's examina- 
tion. It is we scholars and gentlemen that are better off. 

It is admitted that the South Sea Islander in a state of 
nature is overmuch addicted to the practice of eating human 
flesh; but concerning that I submit: first, that he likes it; sec- 
ond, that those who supply it are mostly dead. It is upon his 
enemies that he feeds, and these he would kill anyhow, as we 
do ours. In civilized, enlightened and Christian countries, 
where cannibalism has not yet established itself, wars are as 
frequent and destructive as among the maneaters. The un- 
titled savage knows at least why he goes killing, whereas the 
private soldier is commonly in black ignorance of the apparent 
cause of quarrel — of the actual cause, always. Their shares 
in the fruits of victory are about equal : the Chief takes all the 
dead, the General all the glory. Moreover it costs more human 
life to supply a Christian gentleman with food than it does a 
cannibal — with food alone: "board;" if you could figure out 
the number of lives that his lodging, clothing, amusements and 

30 



Civilization 



accomplishments cost the sum would startle. Happily he does 
not pay it. Considering human lives as having value, canni- 
balism is undoubtedly the more economical system. 

II. 

Transplanted institutions grow but slowly; and civiliza- 
tion can not be put into a ship and carried across an ocean. 
The history of this country is a sequence of illustrations of these 
truths. It was settled by civilized men and women from civil- 
ized countries, yet after two and a half centuries with un- 
broken communication with the mother systems, it is still im- 
perfectly civilized. In learning and letters, in art and the 
science of government, America is but a faint and stammering 
echo of England. 

For nearly all that is good in our American civilization we 
are indebted to England; the errors and mischiefs are of our 
own creation. We have originated little, because there is 
little to originate, but we have unconsciously reproduced many 
of the discredited and abandoned systems of former ages and 
other countries — receiving them at second hand, but making 
them ours by the sheer strength and immobility of the national 
belief in their newness. Newness! Why, it is not possible 
to make an experiment in government, in art, in literature, in 
sociology, or in morals, that has not been made over, and over, 
and over again. Fools talk of clear and simple remedies for 
this and that evil afflicting the commonwealth. If a proposed 
remedy is obvious and easily intelligible, it is condemned in 
the naming, for it is morally certain to have been tried a thou- 
sand times in the history of the world, and had it been effective 
men ere now would have forgotten, from mere disuse, how to 
produce the evil it cured. 

31 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

There are clear and simple remedies for nothing. In medi- 
cine there has been discovered but a single specific; in politics 
not one. The interests, moral and natural, of a community in 
our highly differentiated civilization are so complex, intricate, 
delicate and interdependent, that you can not touch one with- 
out affecting all. It is a familiar truth that no law was ever 
passed that did not have unforeseen results ; but of these results, 
by far the greater number are never recognized as of its creation. 
The best that can be said of any "measure" is, that the sum of its 
perceptible benefits seems so to exceed the sum of its perceptible 
evils as to constitute a balance of advantage. Yet the mag- 
nificent innocence of the statesman or philosopher to whose 
understanding "the whole matter lies in a nutshell" — who thinks 
he can formulate a practical political or social policy within the 
four corners of an epigram — who fears nothing because he 
knows nothing — is constantly to the fore with a simple specific 
for ills whose causes are complex, constant and inscrutable. 
To the understanding of this creature a difficulty well ignored 
is half overcome; so he buttons up his eyes and assails the 
problems of life with the divine confidence of a blind pig 
traversing a labyrinth. 

The glories of England are our glories. She can achieve 
nothing that our fathers did not help to make possible to her. 
The learning, the power, the refinement of a great nation, are 
not the growth of a century, but of many centuries; each gen- 
eration builds upon the work of the preceding. For untold 
ages our ancestors wrought to rear that "revered pile," the 
civilization of England. And shall we now try to belittle the 
mighty structure because other though kindred hands are laying 
the top courses while we have elected to found a new tower in 
another land? The American eulogist of civilization who is 

32 



Civilization 

not proud of his heritage in England's glory is unworthy to 
enjoy his lesser heritage in the lesser glory of his own country. 

Hie English are undoubtedly our intellectual superiors; 
and as the virtues are solely the product of education — a rogue 
being only a dunce considered from another point of view — 
they are our moral superiors likewise. Why should they not be ? 
It is a land not of log and pine-board schoolhouses grudgingly 
erected and containing schools supported by such niggardly 
tax levies as a sparse and hard-handed population will consent 
to pay, but of ancient institutions splendidly endowed by the 
State and by centuries of private benefaction. As a means of 
dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school 
system is not without merit; it spreads it out sufficiently thin to 
give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than 
he would have been without it; but to compare it with that 
which is not the creature of legislation acting with malice afore- 
thought, but the unnoted outgrowth of ages, is to be ridiculous. 
It is like comparing the laid-out town of a western prairie, its 
right-angled streets, prim cottages, "built on the installment 
plan," and its wooden a-b-c shops, with the grand old town of 
Oxford, topped with the clustered domes and towers of its 
twenty-odd great colleges, the very names of many of whose 
founders have perished from human record as have all the 
chronicles of the times in which they lived. 

It is not alone that we have had to "subdue the wilder- 
ness;" our educational conditions are otherwise adverse. Our 
political system is unfavorable. Our fortunes, accumulated in 
one generation, are dispersed in the next. If it takes three gen- 
erations to make a gentleman one will not make a thinker. In- 
struction is acquired, but capacity for instruction is transmitted. 
The brain that is to contain a trained intellect is not the result 

33 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

of a haphazard marriage between a clown and a wench, nor 
does it get its tractable tissues from a hard-headed farmer and a 
soft-headed milliner. If you confess the importance of race and 
pedigree in a race horse and a bird dog how dare you deny it 
in a man? 

I do not claim that the political and social system that 
creates an aristocracy of leisure, and consequently of intellect, 
is the best possible kind of human organization; I perceive its 
disadvantages clearly enough. But I do not hold that a sys- 
tem under which all important public trusts, political and pro- 
fessional, civil and military, ecclesiastical and secular, are held 
by educated men — that is, men of trained faculties and dis- 
ciplined judgment — is not an altogether faulty system. 

It is only in our own country that an exacting literary taste 
is believed to disqualify a man for purveying to the literary 
needs of a taste less exacting — a proposition obviously absurd, 
for an exacting taste is nothing but the intelligent discrimination 
of a judgment instructed by comparison and observation. There 
is, in fact, no pursuit or occupation, from that of a man who 
blows up a balloon to that of the man who bores out the stove 
pipes, in which he that has talent and education is not a better 
worker than he that has either, and he than he that has neither. 
It is a universal human weakness to disparage the knowledge 
that we do not ourselves possess, but it is only my own beloved 
country that can justly boast herself the last refuge and asylum 
of the impotents and incapables who deny the advantage of all 
knowledge whatsoever. It was an American Senator (Logan) 
who declared that he had devoted a couple of weeks to the 
study of finance, and found the accepted authorities all wrong. 
It was another American Senator (Morton) who, confronted 
with certain ugly facts in the history of another country, pro- 

34 



Civilization 

posed "to brush away all facts, and argue the question on con- 
siderations of plain common sense." 

Republican institutions have this disadvantage : by incessant 
changes in the personnel of government- — to say nothing of the 
manner of men that ignorant constituencies elect; and all con- 
stituencies are ignorant — we attain to no fixed principles and 
standards. There is no such thing here as a science of politics, 
because it is not to any one's interest to make politics the study 
of his life. Nothing is settled; no truth finds general accept- 
ance. What we do one year we undo the next, and do over 
again the year following. Our energy is wasted in, and our 
prosperity suffers from, experiments endlessly repeated. 

One of the disadvantages of our social system, which is the 
child of our political, is the tyranny of public opinion, for- 
bidding the utterance of wholesome but unpalatable truth. In 
a republic we are so accustomed to the rule of majorities that it 
seldom occurs to us to examine their title to dominion; and as 
the ideas of might and right are, by our innate sense of justice, 
linked together, we come to consider public opinion infallible 
and almost sacred. Now, majorities rule, not because they are 
right, but because they are able to rule. In event of collision 
they would conquer, so it is expedient for minorities to submit 
beforehand to save trouble. In fact, majorities, embracing, as 
they do the most ignorant, seldom think rightly ; public opinion, 
being the opinion of mediocrity, is commonly a mistake and a 
mischief. But it is to nobody's interest — it is against the inter- 
est of most — to dispute with it. Public writer and public 
speaker alike find their account in confirming "the plain people" 
in their brainless errors and brutish prejudices — in glutting their 
omnivorous vanity and inflaming their implacable racial and 
national hatreds. 

3S 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

I have long held the opinion that patriotism is one of the 
most abominable vices affecting the human understanding. 
Every patriot in this world believes his country better than any 
other country. Now, they cannot all be the best; indeed, only 
one can be the best, and it follows that the patriots of all the 
others have suffered themselves to be misled by a mere senti- 
ment into blind unreason. In its active manifestation — it is fond 
of shooting — patriotism would be well enough if it were simply 
defensive; but it is also aggressive, and the same feeling that 
prompts us to strike for our altars and our fires impels us like- 
wise to go over the border to quench the fires and overturn the 
altars of our neighbors. It is all very pretty and spirited, what 
the poets tell us about Thermopylae, but there was as much 
patriotism at one end of that pass as there was at the other. 

Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought sub- 
ordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part. 
Worse still, the fraction so favored is determined by an 
accident of birth or residence. Patriotism is like a dog which, 
having entered at random one of a row of kennels, suffers more 
in combats with the dogs in the other kennels than it would 
have done by sleeping in the open air. The hoodlum who cuts 
the tail from a Chinamen's nowl, and would cut the nowl 
from the body if he dared, is simply a patriot with a logical 
mind, having the courage of his opinions. Patriotism is fierce 
as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone and irrational 
as a headless hen. 

III. 

There are two ways of clarifying liquids — ebullition and 
precipitation; one forces the impurities to the surface as scum, 
the other sends them to the bottom as dregs. The former is the 

36 



Civilization 



more offensive, and that seems to be our way; but neither is 
useful if the impurities are merely separated but not removed. 
We are told with tiresome iteration that our social and political 
systems are clarifying; but when is the skimmer to appear? 
If the purpose of free institutions is good government where is 
the good government? — when may it be expected to begin? — 
how is it to come about? Systems of government have no sanc- 
tity ; they are practical means to a simple end — the public wel- 
fare; worthy of no respect if they fail of its accomplishment. 
The tree is known by its fruit. Ours is bearing crab-apples. If 
the body politic is constitutionally diseased, as I verily believe ; 
if the disorder inheres in the system; there is no remedy. The 
fever must burn itself out, and then Nature will do the rest. 
One does not prescribe what time alone can administer. We 
have put our criminal class in power; do we suppose they will 
efface themselves? Will they restore to us the power of gov- 
erning them? They must have their way and go their length. 
The natural and immemorial sequence is : tyranny, insurrection, 
combat. In combat everything that wears a sword has a 
chance — even the right. History does not forbid us to hope. 
But it forbids us to rely upon numbers; they will be against 
us. If history teaches anything worth learning it teaches that 
the majority of mankind is neither good nor wise. Where 
government is founded upon the public conscience and the 
public intelligence the stability of States is a dream. Nor have 
we any warrant for the Tennysonian faith that 

"Freedom broadens slowly down 
From precedent to precedent." 

In that moment of time that is covered by historical records 
we have abundant evidence that each generation has believed 

37 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

itself wiser and better than any of its predecessors; that each 
people has believed itself to have the secret of national per- 
petuity. In support of this universal delusion there is nothing 
to be said ; , the desolate places of the earth cry out against 
it. Vestiges of obliterated civilizations cover the earth; no 
savage but has camped upon the sites of proud and popu- 
lous cities; no desert but has heard the statesman's boast of 
national stability. Our nation, our laws, our history — all 
shall go down to everlasting oblivion with the others, and by 
the same road. But I submit that we are traveling it with 
needless haste. 

But it is all right and righteous. It can be spared — this 
Jonah's gourd civilization of ours. We have hardly the rudi- 
ments of a true civilization; compared with the splendors of 
which we catch dim glimpses in the fading past, ours are as 
an illumination of tallow candles. We know no more than 
the ancients; we only know other things, but nothing in which 
is an assurance of perpetuity, and little that is truly wisdom. 
Our vaunted elixir vitcE is the art of printing with moveable 
types. What good will those do when posterity, struck by the 
inevitable intellectual blight, shall have ceased to read what is 
printed? Our libraries will become its stables, our books its 
fuel. 

Ours is a civilization that might be heard from afar in 
space as a scolding and a riot; a civilization in which the race 
has so differentiated as to have no longer a community of 
interest and feeling; which shows as a ripe result of the princi- 
ples underlying it a reasonless and rascally feud between rich 
and poor; in which one is offered a choice (if one have the 
means to take it) between American plutocracy and European 
militocracy, with an imminent chance of renouncing either for a 

38 



Civilization 

stultocratic republic with a headsman in the presidential chair 
and every laundress in exile. 

I have not a "solution" to the "labor problem." I have 
only a story. Many and many years ago lived a man who 
was so good and wise that none in all the world was so good 
and wise as he. He was one of those few whose goodness 
and wisdom are such that after some time has passed their 
fellowmen begin to think them gods and treasure their words as 
divine law; and by millions they are worshiped through 
centuries of time. Amongst the utterances of this man was 
one command — not a new nor perfect one — which has seemed 
to his adorers so preeminently wise that they have given it a 
name by which it is known over half the world. One of the 
sovereign virtues of this famous law is its simplicity, which 
is such that all hearing must understand; and obedience is so 
easy that any nation refusing is unfit to exist except in the turb- 
ulence and adversity that will surely come to it. When a 
people would avert want and strife, or, having them, would 
restore plenty and peace, this noble commandment offers the 
only means — all other plans for safety or relief are as vain 
as dreams, and as empty as the crooning of fools. And be- 
hold, here it is: "All things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them." 

What! you unappeasable rich, coining the sweat and 
blood of your workmen into drachmas, understanding the law 
of supply and demand as mandatory and justifying your cruel 
greed by the senseless dictum that "business is business;" you 
lazy workman, railing at the capitalist by whose desertion, 
when you have frightened away his capital, you starve — riot- 
ing and shedding blood and torturing and poisoning by way 
of answer to exaction and by way of exaction; you foul 

39 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essay^s 

anarchists, applauding with indelicate palms when one of 
your coward kind hurls a bomb amongst powerless and help- 
less women and children ; you imbecile politicians with a plague 
of remedial legislation for the irremediable; you writers and 
thinkers unread in history, with as many "solutions to the 
labor problem" as there are dunces among you who can not 
coherently define it — do you really think yourself wiser than 
Jesus of Nazareth? Do you seriously suppose yourselves 
competent to amend his plan for dealing with all the evils 
besetting states and souls? Have you the effrontery to believe 
that those who spurn his Golden Rule you can bind to obed- 
ience of an act entitled an act to amend an act? Bah! you 
fatigue the spirit. Go get ye to your scoundrel lockouts, your 
villain strikes, your blacklisting, your boycotting, your speech- 
ing, marching and maundering; but if ye do not to others as 
ye would that they do to you it shall occur, and that right 
soon, that ye be drowned in your own blood and your pick- 
pocket civilization quenched as a star that falls into the sea. 



40 



The Game 
of Politics 



The Came of Politics 




I. 

IF ONE were to declare himself a Democrat or a 
Republican and the claim should be contested he 
would find it a difficult one to prove. The missing 
link in his chain of evidence would be the major 
premise in the syllogism necessary to the establishment of his 
political status — a definition of "Democrat" or "Republican." 
Most of the statesmen in public and private life who are poll- 
parroting these words, do so with entire unconsciousness of their 
meaning, or rather without knowledge that they have lost 
whatever of meaning they once had. The words are mere 
"survivals," marking dead issues and covering allegiances of 
the loosest and most shallow character. On any question of 
importance each party is divided against itself and dares not 
formulate a preference. There is no question before the 
country upon which one may not think and vote as he likes 
without affecting his standing in the political communion of 
saints of which he professes himself a member. "Party lines" 
are as terribly confused as the parallels of latitude and longi- 
tude after a twisting earthquake, or those aimless lines repre- 
senting the competing railroad on a map published by a com- 
pany operating "the only direct route." It is not probable that 
this state of things can last; if there is to be "government by 
party" — and we should be sad to think that so inestimable a 
boon were soon to return to Him who gave it — men must begin 
to let their angry passions rise and take sides. "Ill fares the 
land to hastening ills a prey," where the people are too wise 

43 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

to dispute and too good to fight. Let us have the good old 
political currency of bloody noses and cracked crowns; let the 
yawp of the demagogue be heard in the land ; let ears be pes- 
tered with the spargent cheers of the masses. Give us a whoop- 
up that shall rouse us like a rattling peal of thunder. Will 
nobody be our Moses — there should be two Moseses — to 
lead us through this detestable wilderness of political stag- 
nation? 

II. 

Nowhere "on God's green earth'* — it is fitting, that this 
paper contain a bit of bosh — nowhere is so much insufferable 
stuff talked in a given period of time as in an American political 
convention. It is there that all those objectionable elements of 
the national character which evoke the laughter of Europe and 
are the despair of our friends find freest expression, unhampered 
by fear of any censorship more exacting than that of "the 
opposing party" — which takes no account of intellectual 
delinquencies, but only of moral. The "organs" of the "oppos- 
ing party" will not take the trouble to point out — even to 
observe — that the "debasing sentiments" and "criminal views" 
uttered in speech and platform are expressed in sickening 
syntax and offensive rhetoric. Doubtless an American poli- 
tician, statesman, what you will, could go into a political con- 
vention and signify his views with simple, unpretentious com- 
mon sense, but doubtless he never does. 

Every community is cursed with a number of "orators" — 
men regarded as "eloquent" — "silver tongued" men — fellows 
who to the common American knack at brandishing the tongue 
add an exceptional felicity of platitude, a captivating mastery 
of dog's-eared sentiment, a copious and obedient vocabulary of 

44 



The Game of Politics 



eulogium, an iron insensibility to the ridiculous and an infinite 
affinity to fools. These afflicting Chrysostoms are always lying 
in wait for an "occasion." It matters not what it is: a "recep- 
tion" to some great man from abroad, a popular ceremony 
like the laying of a corner-stone, the opening of a fair, the 
dedication of a public building, an anniversary banquet of an 
ancient and honorable order (they all belong to ancient and 
honorable orders) oj a club dinner — they all belong to clubs 
and pay dues. But it is in the political convention that they 
come out particularly strong. By some imperious tradition 
having the force of written law it is decreed that in these 
absurd bodies of our fellow citizens no word of sense shall be 
uttered from the platform; whatever is uttered in set speeches 
shall be addressed to the meanest capacity present. As a 
chain can be no stronger than its weakest link, so nothing said 
by the speakers at a political convention must be above the 
intellectual reach of the most pernicious idiot having a seat 
and a vote. I don't know why it is so. It seems to be thought 
that if he is not suitably entertained he will not attend, as a 
delegate, the next convention. 

Here are the opening sentences of the speech in which a 
man was once nominated for Governor: 

"Two years ago the Republican party in State and Nation 
marched to imperial triumph. On every hilltop and mountain 
peak our beacons blazed and we awakened the echoes of 
every valley with songs of our rejoicings." 

And so forth. Now, if I were asked to recast those 
sentences so that they should conform to the simple truth and 
be inoffensive to good taste I should say something like this: 

"Two years ago the Republican party won a general 
election." 

45 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

If there is any thing in this inflated rigmarole that is not 
adequately expressed in my amended statement, what is it? 
As to eloquence it will hardly be argued that nonsense, false- 
hood and metaphors which were old when Rome was young 
are essential to that. The first man (in early Greece) who 
spoke of awakening an echo did a felicitous thing. Was it 
felicitous in the second? Is it felicitous now? As to that 
military metaphor — the "marching" and so forth — its inventor 
was as great an ass as any one of the incalculable multitude 
of his plagiarists. On this matter hear the late Richard 
Grant White: 

"Is it not time that we had done with the nauseous talk 
about campaigns, and standard-bearers, and glorious victories 
(imperial triumphs) and all the bloated army-bumming bom- 
bast which is so rife for the six months preceding an election? 
To read almost any one of our political papers during a canvass 
is enough to make one sick and sorry. . . . An election 
has no manner of likeness to a campaign, or a battle. It is 
not even a contest in which the stronger or more dexterous party 
is the winner; it is a mere counting, in which the bare fact that 
one party is the more numerous puts it in power if it will only 
come up and be counted ; to insure which a certain time is spent 
by each party in reviling and belittling the candidates of its 
opponents and lauding its own; and this is the canvass, at the 
likening of which to a campaign every honest soldier might 
reasonably take offense." 

But, after all. White was only "one o' them dam Htery 
fellers," and I dare say the original proponent of the military 
metaphor, away off there in "the dark backward and abysm 
of time," knew a lot more about practical politics than White 
ever did. And it is practical politics to be an ass. 

46 



The Came of Politics 



In withdrawing his own name from before a convention, a 
California politician once made a purely military speech of 
which a single sample passage is all that I shall allow myself the 
happiness to quote : 

"I come before you today as a Republican of the Repub- 
lican banner county of this great State of ours. From snowy 
Shasta on the north to sunny Diego on the south ; from the west, 
where the waves of the Pacific look upon our shores, to where 
the barriers of the great Sierras stand clad in eternal snow, 
there is no more loyal county to the Republican party in this 
State than the county from which I hail. [Applause, 
naturally.] Its loyalty to the party has been tested on many 
fields of battle [Anglice, in many elections] and it has never 
wavered in the contest. Wherever the fate of battle was 
trembling in the balance [Homer, and since Homer, Tom, 
Dick and Harry] Alameda county stepped into the breach 
and rescued the Republican party from defeat." 

Translated into English this military mouthing would read 
somewhat like this: 

"I live in Alameda county, where the Republicans have 
uniformly outvoted the Democrats." 

The orators at the Democratic convention a week earlier 
were no better and no different. Their rhetorical stock-in-trade 
was the same old shop-worn figures of speech in which their 
predecessors have dealt for ages, and in which their successors 
will traffic to the end of — well, to the end of that imitative 
quality in the national character, which, by its superior in- 
tensity, serves to distinguish us from the apes that perish. 



47 



The ShadoTV on the Dial and other Essays 



III. 

"What we most need, to secure honest elections," says a 
well-meaning reformer, "is the Clifford or the Myers voting 
machine." Why, truly, here is a hopeful spirit — a rare and 
radiant intelligence suffused with the conviction that men can 
be made honest by machinery — that human character is a 
matter of gearing, ratchets and dials! One would give some- 
thing to know how it feels to be like that. A mind so con- 
stituted must be as happy in its hope as a hen incubating a nest- 
ful of porcelain door-knobs. It lives in rapturous contempla- 
tion of a world of its own creation — a world where public 
morality and political good order are to be had by purchase 
at the machine-shop. In that delectable world religion is super- 
fluous ; the true high priest is the mechanical engineer ; the minor 
clergy are the village blacksmiths. It is rather a pity that 
so fine and fair a sphere should prosper only in the attenuated 
ether of an idiot's understanding. 

Voting-machines are doubtless well enough; they save 
labor and enable the statesmen of the street to know the result 
within a few minutes of the closing of the polls — ^whereby many 
are spared to their country who would otherwise incur fatal dis- 
orders by exposure to the night air while assisting in awaiting 
the returns. But a voting-machine that human ingenuity can 
not pervert, human ingenuity can not invent. 

That is true, too, of laws. Your statesman of a mental 
stature somewhat overtopping that of the machine-person puts 
his faith in law. Providence has designed to permit him to be 
persuaded of the efficacy of statutes — good, stringent, carefully 
drawn statutes definitively repealing all the laws of nature in 
conflict with any of their provisions. So the poor devil (I am 

48 



The Came of Politics 



writing of Mr. Legion) turns for relief from law to law, ever on 
the stool of repentance, yet ever unfouling the anchor of 
hope. By no power on earth can his indurated understand- 
ing be penetrated by the truth that his woful state is due, not to 
any laws of his own, nor to any lack of them, but to his 
rascally refusal to obey the Golden Rule. How long is it since 
we were all clamoring for the Australian ballot law, which was 
to make a new Heaven and a new earth? We have the 
Australian ballot law and the same old earth smelling to the 
same old Heaven. Writhe upon the triangle as we may, 
groan out what new laws we will, the pitiless thong will fall 
upon our bleeding backs as long as we deserve it. If our 
sins, which are scarlet, are to be washed as white as wool it 
must be in the tears of a genuine contrition: our crocodile 
deliverances will profit us nothing. We must stop chasing 
dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature 
and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization. 
We must subdue our detestable habit of shaking hands with 
prosperous rascals and fawning upon the merely rich. It is not 
permitted to our employers to plead in justification of low 
wages the law of supply and demand that is giving them high 
profits. It is not permitted to discontented employees to break 
the bones of contented ones and destroy the foundations of 
social order. It is infamous to look upon public office with 
the lust of possession; it is disgraceful to solicit political pre- 
ferment, to strive and compete for "honors" that are sullied 
and tarnished by the touch of the reaching hand. Until we 
amend our personal characters we shall amend our laws in 
vain. Though Paul plant and Apollos water, the field of 
reform will grow nothing but the figless thistle and the grapeless 
thorn. The State is an aggregation of individuals. Its public 

49 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

character is the expression of their personal ones. By no 
poHtical prestidigitation can it be made better and wiser than 
the sum of their goodness and wisdom. To expect that men 
who do not honorably and intelHgently conduct their private 
affairs will honorably and intelligently conduct the affairs of 
the community is to be a fool. We are told that out of nothing 
God made the Heavens and the earth ; but out of nothing God 
never did and man never can, make a public sense of honor and 
a public conscience. Miracles are now performed but one day 
of the year — the twenty-ninth of February; and on leap year 
God is forbidden to perform them. 

IV. 

Ye who hold that the power of eloquence is a thing of the 
past and the orator an anachronism; who believe that the 
trend of political events and the results of parliamentary action 
are determined by committees in cold consultation and the 
machinations of programmes in holes and corners, consider the 
ascension of Bryan and be wise. A week before the conven- 
tion of 1896 William J. Bryan had never heard of himself; 
upon his natural obscurity was superposed the opacity of a 
Congressional service that effaced him from the memory of 
even his faithful dog, and made him immune to dunning. 
Today he is pinnacled upon the summit of the tallest political 
distinction, gasping in the thin atmosphere of his unfamiliar 
environment and fitly astonished at the mischance. To the 
dizzy elevation of his candidacy he was hoisted out of the 
shadow by his own tongue, the longest and liveliest in Christen- 
dom. Had he held it — which he could not have done with 
both hands — there had been no Bryan. His creation was the 

50 



The Game of Politics 



unstudied act of his own larynx; it said, "Let there be Bryan," 
and there was Bryan. Even in these degenerate days there is 
a hope for the orators when one can make himself a Presiden- 
tial peril by merely waving the red flag in the cave of the winds 
and tormenting the circumjacence with a brandish of abundant 
hands. 

To be quite honest, I do not entirely believe that Orator 
Bryan's tongue had anything to do with it. I have long been 
convinced that personal persuasion is a matter of animal mag- 
netism — what in its more obvious manifestation we now call 
hypnotism. At the back of the words and the postures, and 
independent of them, is that secret, mysterious power, address- 
ing, not the ear, not the eye, nor, through them, the understand- 
ing, but through its matching quality in the auditor, captivating 
the will and enslaving it. Hiat is how persuasion is effected; 
the spoken words merely supply a pretext for surrender. They 
enable us to yield without loss of our self-esteem, in the delu- 
sion that we are conceding to reason what is really extorted by 
charm. The words are necessary, too, to point out what the 
orator wishes us to think, if we are not already apprised of 
it. When the nature of his power is better understood and 
frankly recognized, he can spare himself the toil of talking. 
The parliamentary debate of the future will probably be con- 
ducted in silence, and with only such gestures as go by the 
name of "passes." The chairman will state the question before 
the House and the side, affirmative or negative, to be taken 
by the honorable member entitled to the floor. That gentleman 
will rise, train his compelling orbs upon the miscreants in 
opposition, execute a few passes and exhaust his alloted time in 
looking at them. He will then yield to an honorable member 
of dissenting views. The preponderance in magnetic power 

51 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

and hypnotic skill will be manifest in the voting. The advant- 
ages of the method are as plain as the nose on an elephant's 
face. The "arena" will no longer "ring" with anybody's 
"rousing speech," to the irritating abridgment of the inalienable 
right to pursuit of sleep. Honorable members will lack pro- 
vocation to hurl allegations and cuspidors. Pitchforking states- 
men and tosspot reformers will be unable to play at pitch-and- 
toss with reputations not submitted for the performance. In 
short, the congenial asperities of debate will be so mitigated that 
the honorable member from Hades will retire permanently 
from the hauls of legislation. 

V. 

"Public opinion," says Buckle, "being the voice of the 
average man, is the voice of mediocrity." Is it therefore so 
very wise and infallible a guide as to be accepted without other 
credentials than its name and fame? Ought we to follow its 
light and leading with no better assurance of the character of 
its authority than a count of noses of those following it already, 
and with no inquiry as to whether it has not on many former 
occasions let them and their several sets of predecessors into 
bogs of error and over precipices to "eternal mock?" Surely 
"the average man,** as every one knows him, is not very wise, 
not very learned, not very good; how is it that his views, of 
so intricate and difficult matters as those of which public 
opinion makes pronouncement through him are entitled to 
such respect? It seems to me that the average man, as I know 
him, is very much a fool, and something of a rogue as well. 
He has only a smattering of education, knows virtually noth- 
ing of political history, nor history of any kind, is incapable of 

52 



The Came of Politics 



logical, that is to say clear, thinking, is subject to the suasion of 
base and silly prejudices, and selfish beyond expression. 
That such a person's opinions should be so obviously better 
than my own that I should accept them instead, and assist in en- 
acting them into laws, appears to me most improbable. I may 
"bow to the will of the people" as gracefully as a defeated 
candidate, and for the same reason, namely, that I can not 
help myself; but to admit that I was wrong in my belief and 
flatter the power that subdues me — no, that I will not do. 
And if nobody would do so the average man would not be so 
very cock-sure of his infallibility and might sometimes con- 
sent to be counseled by his betters. 

In any matter of which the public has imperfect knowledge, 
public opinion is as likely to be erroneous as is the opinion of 
an individual equally uninformed. To hold otherwise is to 
hold that wisdom can be got by combining many ignorances. 
A man who knows nothing of algebra can not be assisted in 
the solution of an algebraic problem by calling in a neighbor 
who knows no more than himself, and the solution approved by 
the unanimous vote of ten million such men would count for 
nothing against that of a competent mathematician. To be 
entirely consistent, gentlemen enamored of public opinion 
should insist that the text books of our common schools should 
be the creation of a mass meeting, and all disagreements aris- 
ing in the course of the work settled by a majority vote. That 
is how all difficulties incident to the popular translation of the 
Hebrew Scriptures were composed. It should be admitted, 
however that most of those voting knew a little Hebrew, though 
not much. A problem in mathematics is a very simple thing 
compared with many of those upon which the people are called 

53 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

to pronounce by resolution and ballot — for example, a question 
of finance. 

"The voice of the people is the voice of God" — the say- 
ing is so respectably old that it comes to us in the Latin. He 
is a strange, an unearthly politician who has not a score of 
times publicly and solemnly signified his faith in it. But does 
anyone really believe it? Let us see. In the period between 
1 859 and 1 885, the Democratic party was defeated six times in 
succession. The voice of the people pronounced it in error and 
unfit to govern. Yet after each overthrow it came back into the 
field gravely reaffirming its faith in the principles that God 
had condemned. Then God twice reversed Himself, and the 
Republicans "never turned a hair," but set about beating Him 
with as firm a confidence of success (justified by the event) as 
they had known in the years of their prosperity. Doubtless 
in every instance of a political party's defeat there are defec- 
tions, but doubtless not all are due to the voice that spoke out 
of the great white light that fell about Saul of Tarsus. By the 
way, it is worth observing that that clever gentleman was 
under no illusion regarding the origin of the voice that wrought 
his celebrated "flop"; he did not confound it with the vox 
populi The people of his time and place had no objection to 
the persecution that he was conducting, and could persecute 
a trifle themselves upon occasion. 

Majorities rule, when they do rule, not because they ought, 
but because they can. We vote in order to learn without 
fighting which party is the stronger; it is less disagreeable to 
learn it that way than the other way. Sometimes the party that 
is numerically the weaker is by possession of the Government 
actually the stronger, and could maintain itself in power by an 
appeal to arms, but the habit of submitting when outvoted is 

54 



The Game of Politics 



hard to break. Moreover, we all recognize in a subconscious 
way, the reasonableness of the habit as a practical method of 
getting on; and there is always the confident hope of success 
in the next canvass. That one's cause will succeed because 
it ought to succeed is perhaps the most general and invincible 
folly affecting the human judgment. Observation can not 
shake it, nor experience destroy. Though you bray a partisan 
in the mortar of adversity till he numbers the strokes of the 
pestle by the hairs of his head, yet will not this fool notion 
depart from him. He is always going to win the next time, 
however frequently and disastrously he has lost before. And 
he can always give you the most cogent reasons for the faith 
that is in him. His chief reliance is on the "fatal mistakes" 
made since the last election by the other party. There never 
was a year in which the party in power and the party out of 
power did not make bad mistakes — mistakes which, unlike 
eggs and fish, seem always worst when freshest. If idiotic 
errors of policy were always fatal, no party would ever win an 
election and there would be a hope of better government 
under the benign sway of the domestic cow. 

VI. 

Each political party accuses the "opposing candidate" of 
refusing to answer certain questions which somebody has 
chosen to ask him. I think myself it is discreditable for a 
candidate to answer any questions at all, to make speeches, de- 
clare his policy, or to do anything whatever to get himself 
elected. If a political party choose to nominate a man so obscure 
that his character and his views on all public questions are not 
known or inferable he ought to have the dignity to refuse to ex- 

55 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

pound them. As to the strife for office being a pursuit worthy 
of a noble ambition, I do not think so ; nor shall I believe that 
many do think so until the term "office seeker" carries a less op- 
probrious meaning and the dictum that "the office should seek 
the man, not the man the office," has a narrower currency among 
all manner of persons. That by acts and words generally felt 
to be discreditable a man may evoke great popular enthusiasm 
is not at all surprising. The late Mr. Barnum was not the first 
nor the last to observe that the people love to be humbugged. 
They love an impostor and a scamp, and the best service that 
you can do for a candidate for high political preferment is to 
prove him a little better than a thief, but not quite so good as 
a thug. 

VII. 

The view is often taken that a representative is the same 
thing as a delegate; that he is to have, and can honestly enter- 
tain, no opinion that is at variance with the whims and the 
caprices of his constituents. This is the very reductio ad 
ahsurdum of representative government. That it is the 
dominant theory of the future there can be little doubt, for it 
Is of a piece with the progress downward which is the invariable 
and unbroken tendency of republican institutions. It fits in 
well with manhood suffrage, rotation in office, unrestricted 
patronage, assessment of subordinates, an elective judiciary 
and the rest of it. This theory of representative institutions is 
the last and lowest stage in our pleasant performance of 
"shooting Niagara.** When it shall have universal recogni- 
tion and assent we shall have been fairly engulfed in the whirl- 
pool, and the buzzard of anarchy may hopefully whet his 
beak for the national carcass. My view of the matter — ^which 

56 



The Came of Politics 



has the further merit of being the view held by those who 
founded this Government— ^is that a man holding office from 
and for the people is in conscience and honor bound to do 
what seems to his judgment best for the general welfare, re- 
spectfully regardless of any and all other considerations. This 
is especially true of legislators, to whom such specific "instruc- 
tions'* as constituents sometimes send are an impertinence and 
an insult. Pushed to its logical conclusion, the "delegate" idea 
would remove all necessity of electing men of brains and 
judgment ; one man properly connected with his constituents by 
telegraph would make as good a legislator as another. Indeed, 
as a matter of economy, one representative should act for 
many constituencies, receiving his instructions how to vote from 
mass meetings in each. This, besides being logical, would have 
the added advantage of widening and hardening the power of 
the local "bosses," who, by properly managing the showing of 
hands could have the same beneficent influence in national 
affairs that they now enjoy in municipal. The plan would be 
a pretty good one if there were not so many other ways for 
the Nation to go to the Devil that it appears needless. 

VIII. 

With a wiser wisdom than was given to them, our fore- 
fathers in making the Constitution would not have provided that 
each House of Congress "shall be the judge of the elections, 
returns and qualifications of its own members.'* They would 
have foreseen that a ruling majority of Congress could not safely 
be trusted to exercise this power justly in the public interest, but 
would abuse it in the interest of party. A man*s right to sit 
in a legislative body should be determined, not by that body, 

57 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

which has neither the impartiality, the knowledge of evidence 
nor the time to determine it rightly, but by the courts of law. 
That is how it is done in England, where Parliament volun- 
tarily surrendered the right to say by whom the constituencies 
shall be represented, and there is no disposition to resume it. 
As the vices hunt in packs, so, too, virtues are gregarious; if 
our Congress had the righteousness to decide contested elec- 
tions justly it would have also the self-denial not to wish to 
decide them at all. 

IX. 

The purpose of the legislative custom of "eulogizing" 
dead members of Congress is not apparent unless it is to add a 
terror to death and make honorable and self-respecting members 
rather bear the ills they have than escape through the gates of 
death to others that they know a good deal about. If a member 
of that kind, who has had the bad luck to "go before," could 
be consulted he would indubitably say that he was sorry to be 
dead; and that is not a natural frame of mind in one who is 
exempt from the necessity of himself "delivering a eulogy." 

It may be urged that the Congressional "eulogy" expresses 
in a general way the eulogist's notion of what he would like to 
have somebody say of himself when he is by death elected to the 
Lower House. If so, then Heaven help him to a better taste. 
Meanwhile it is a patriotic duty to prevent him from indulging 
at the public expense the taste that he has. There have been a 
few men in Congress who could speak of the character and 
services of a departed member with truth and even eloquence. 
One such was Senator Vest. Of many others, the most 
charitable thing that one can conscientiously say is that one 

58 



The Came of Politics 



would a little rather hear a "eulogy" by them than on them. 
Considering that there are many kinds of brains and only one 
kind of no brains, their diversity of gifts is remarkable, but one 
characteristic they have in common: they are all poets. Their 
efforts in the way of eulogium illustrate and illuminate PascaKs 
obscure saying that poetry is a particular sadness. If not sad 
themselves, they are at least the cause of sadness in others, for 
no sooner do they take to their legs to remind us that life is 
fleeting, and to make us glad that it is, than they burst into 
bloom as poets all ! Some one has said that in the contempla- 
tion of death there is something that belittles. Perhaps that 
explains the transformation. Anyhow the Congressional 
eulogist takes to verse as naturally as a moth to a candle, and 
with about the same result to his reputation for sense. 

The poetry is commonly not his own; when it violates 
every law of sense, fitness, metre, rhyme and taste it is. But 
nine times in ten it is some dog's-eared, shop-worn quotation 
from one of the "standard" bards, usually Shakspere. There 
are familiar passages from that poet which have been so often 
heard in "the halls of legislation" that they have acquired an 
infamy which unfits them for publication in a decent family 
newspaper; and Shakspere himself, reposing in Elysium on his 
bed of asphodel and moly, omits them when reading his com- 
plete works to the shades of Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson, 
for their sins. 

This whole business ought to be "cut out." It is not only 
a waste of time and a sore trial to the patience of the country; 
it is absolutely immoral. It is not true that a member of 
Congress who, while living was a most ordinary mortal, 
becomes by the accident of death a hero, a saint, "an example 
to American youth." Nobody believes these abominable 

59 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essayjs 

"eulogies," and nobody should be permitted to utter them in 
the time and place designated for another purpose. A "tribute" 
that is exacted by custom and has not the fire and light of spon- 
taneity is without sincerity or sense. A simple resolution of 
regret and respect is all that the occasion requires and would 
not inhibit any further utterance that friends and admirers of 
the deceased might be moved to make elsewhere. If any 
bereaved gentlemen, feeling his heart getting into his head, 
wishes to tickle his ear with his tongue by way of standardizing 
his emotion let him hire a hall and do so. But he should not 
make the Capitol a "Place of Wailing" and the Congres- 
sional Record a book of bathos. 



60 



Some Features 
of the Law 



Some Features of the Law 



I. 




HERE is a difference between religion and the 
amazing circumstructure which, under the name 
of theology, the priesthoods have builded round 
about it, which for centuries they made the world 
believe was the true temple, and which, after incalculable 
mischiefs wrought, immeasurable blood spilled in its extension 
and consolidation, is only now beginning to crumble at the 
touch of reason. There is the same difference between the laws 
and the law — the naked statutes (bad enough, God knows) 
and the incomputable additions made to them by lawyers. 
This immense body of superingenious writings it is that we all 
are responsible to in person and property. It is unquestion- 
able authority for setting aside any statute that any legislative 
body ever passed or can pass. In it are dictates of recognized 
validity for turning topsy-turvy every principle of justice and 
reversing every decree of reason. There is no fallacy so mon- 
strous, no deduction so hideously unrelated to common sense, as 
not to receive, somewhere in the myriad pages of this awful 
compilation, a support that any judge in the land would be 
proud to recognize with a decision if ably persuaded. I do 
not say that the lawyers are altogether responsible for the 
existence of this mass of disastrous rubbish, nor for its domina- 
tion of the laws. They only create and thrust it down our 
throats; we are guilty of contributory negligence in not biting 
the spoon. 

63 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

As long as there exists the right of appeal there is a chance 
of acquittal. Otherwise the right of appeal would be a sham 
and an insult more intolerable, even, than that of the man 
convicted of murder to say why he should not receive the 
sentence which nothing he may say will avert. So long as 
acquittal may ensue guilt is not established. Why, then are 
men sentenced before they are proved guilty? Why are they 
punished in the middle of proceedings against them? A 
lawyer can reply to these questions in a thousand ingenious 
ways ; there is but one answer. It is because we are a barbarous 
race, submitting to laws made by lawyers for lawyers. Let 
the "legal fraternity" reflect that a lawyer is one whose pro- 
fession it is to circumvent the law; that it is a part of his 
business to mislead and befog the court of which he is an 
officer; that it is considered right and reasonable for him to live 
by a division of the spoils of crime and misdemeanor; that the 
utmost atonement he ever makes for acquitting a man whom he 
knows to be guilty is to convict a man whom he knows to be in- 
nocent. I have looked into this thing a bit and it is my judgment 
that all the methods of our courts, and the traditions of bench 
and bar exist and are perpetuated, altered and improved, for the 
one purpose of enabling the lawyers as a class to exact the great- 
est amount of money from the rest of mankind. The laws are 
mostly made by lawyers, and so made as to encourage and 
compel litigation. By lawyers they are interpreted and by 
lawyers enforced for their own profit and advantage. The 
whole intricate and interminable machinery of precedent, rul- 
ings, decisions, objections, writs of error, motions for new trials, 
appeals, reversals, affirmations and the rest of it, is a trans- 
parent and iniquitous systems of "cinching." What remedy 
would I propose? None. There is none to propose. The 

64 



Some Features of the Lan> 



lawyers have "got us" and they mean to keep us. But if 
thoughtless children of the frontier sometimes rise to tar and 
feather the legal pelt may God's grace go with them and amen. 
I do not believe there is a lawyer in Heaven, but by a bath of 
tar and a coating of hen's-down they can be made to resemble 
angels more nearly than by any other process. 

The matchless villainy of making men suffer for crimes of 
which they may eventually be acquitted is consistent with 
our entire system of laws — a system so complicated and con- 
tradictory that a judge simply does as he pleases, subject only 
to the custom of giving for his action reasons that at his 
option may or may not be derived from the statute. He may 
sternly affirm that he sits there to interpret the law as he finds 
it, not to make it accord with his personal notions of right 
and justice. Or he may declare that it could never have been 
the Legislature's intention to do wrong, and so, shielded by the 
useful phrase contra honos mores^ pronounce that illegal which 
he chooses to consider inexpedient. Or he may be guided by 
either of any two inconsistent precedents, as best suits his pur- 
pose. Or he may throw aside both statute and precedent, dis- 
regard good morals, and justify the judgment that he wishes 
to deliver by what other lawyers have written in books, and 
still others, without anybody's authority, have chosen to accept 
as a part of the law. I have in mind judges whom I have 
observed to do all these things in a single term of court, and 
could mention one who has done them all in a single decision, 
and that not a very long one. The amazing feature of the 
matter is that all these methods are lawful — made so, not by 
legislative enactment, but by the judges. Language can not be 
used with sufficient lucidity and positiveness to bind them. 

The legal purpose of a preliminary examination is not the 

65 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

discovery of a criminal; it is the ascertaining of the probable 
guilt or innocence of the person already charged. To permit 
that person's counsel to insult and madden the various assisting 
witnesses in the hope of making them seem to incriminate them- 
selves instead of him by statements that may afterward be used 
to confuse a jury — that is perversion of law to defeat justice. 
The outrageous character of the practice is seen to better 
advantage when contrasted with the tender consideration en- 
joyed by the person actually accused and presumably guilty — 
the presumption of his innocence being as futile a fiction as 
that a sheep's tail is a leg when called so. Actually, the 
prisoner in a criminal trial is the only person supposed to 
have a knowledge of the facts who is not compelled to testify ! 
And this amazing exemption is given him by way of immunity 
from the snares and pitfalls with which the paths of all wit- 
nesses are wantonly beset! To a visiting Lunarian it would 
seem strange indeed that in a Terrestrial court of justice it 
is not deemed desirable for an accused person to incriminate 
himself, and that it is deemed desirable for a subpoena to be 
more dreaded than a warrant. 

When a child, a wife, a servant, a student — any one under 
personal authority or bound by obligation of honor — is accused 
or suspected an explanation is demanded, and refusal to testify 
is held, and rightly held, a confession of guilt. To question 
the accused — rigorously and sharply to examine him on all 
matters relating to the offense, and even trap him if he seem 
to be lying — that is Nature's method of criminal procedure; 
why in our public trials do we forego its advantages? It may 
annoy; a person arrested for crime must expect annoyance. 
It can not make an innocent man incriminate himself, not even 
a witness, but it can make a rogue do so, and therein lies its 

66 



Some Features of the Law 



value. Any pressure short of physical torture or the threat of 
it, that can be put upon a rogue to make him assist in his own 
undoing is just and therefore expedient. 

This ancient and efficient safeguard to rascality, the right 
of a witness to refuse to testify when his testimony would tend 
to convict him of crime, has been strengthened by a decision 
of the United States Supreme Court. That will probably add 
another century or two to its mischievous existence, and possibly 
prove the first act in such an extension of it that eventually a 
witness can not be compelled to testify at all. In fact it is 
difficult to see how he can be compelled to now if he has the 
hardihood to exercise his constitutional right without shame and 
with an intelligent consciousness of its limitless application. 

The case in which the Supreme Court made the decision 
was one in which a witness refused to say whether he had re- 
ceived from a defendant railway company a rate on grain ship- 
ments lower than the rate open to all shippers. The trial was in 
the United States District Court for the Northern District of 
Illinois, and Judge Gresham chucked the scoundrel into jail. 
He naturally applied to the Supreme Court for relief, and that 
high tribunal gave joy to every known or secret malefactor in 
the country by deciding — according to law, no doubt — that 
witnesses in a criminal case can not be compelled to testify to 
anything that **might tend to criminate them in any way, or 
subject them to possible prosecution." The italics are my own 
and seem to me to indicate, about as clearly as extended com- 
ment could, the absolutely boundless nature of the immunity 
that the decision confirms or confers. It is to be hoped that 
some public-spirited gentleman called to the stand in some 
celebrated case may point the country's attention to the state 
of the law by refusing to tell his name, age or occupation, or 

67 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

answer any question whatever. And it would be a fitting 
finale to the farce if he would threaten the too curious attorney 
with an action for damages for compelling a disclosure of 
character. 

Most lawyers have made so profound a study of human 
nature as to think that if they have shown a man to be of loose 
life with regard to women they have shown him to be one that 
would tell needless lies to a jury — a conviction unsupported by 
the familiar facts of life and character. Different men have 
different vices, and addiction to one kind of "upsetting sin" 
does not imply addiction to an unrelated kind. Doubtless a 
rake is a liar in so far as is needful to concealment, but it does 
not follow that he will commit perjury to save a horsethief from 
the penitentiary or send a good man to the gallows. As to 
lying, generally, he is not conspicuously worse than the mere 
lover, male or female; for lovers have been liars from the 
beginning of time. They deceive when it is necessary and 
when it is not. Schopenhauer says that it is because of a sense 
of guilt — they contemplate the commission of a crime and, like 
other criminals, cover their tracks. I am not prepared to say 
if that is the true explanation, but to the fact to be explained I 
am ready to testify with lifted arms. Yet no cross-examining 
attorney tries to break the credibility of a witness by showing 
that he is in love. 

An habitual liar, if disinterested, makes about as good a 
witness as anybody. There is really no such thing as "the 
lust of lying:" falsehoods are told for advantage — commonly 
a shadowy and illusory advantage, but one distinctly enough 
had in mind. Discerning no opportunity to promote his interest, 
tickle his vanity or feed a grudge, the habitual liar will tell the 
truth. If lawyers would study human nature with half the 

68 



Some Features of the Law 



assiduity that they give to resolution of hairs into their longi- 
tudinal elements they would be better fitted for service of the 
devil than they have now the usefulness to be. 

I have always asserted the right and expediency of cross- 
examining attorneys in court with a view to testing their 
credibility. An attorney's relation to the trial is closer and 
more important than that of a witness. He has more to say 
and more opportunities to deceive the jury, not only by naked 
lying, but by both suppressio veri and suggestio falsi Why is 
it not important to ascertain his credibility; and if an inquiry 
into his private life and public reputation will assist, as him- 
self avers, why should he not be put upon the grill and com- 
pelled to sweat out the desired incrimination? I should think it 
might give good results, for example, to compel him to answer a 
few questions touching, not his private life, but his professional. 
Somewhat like this: 

"Did you ever defend a client, knowing him to be guilty?'* 

"What was your motive in doing so?" 

"But in addition to your love of fair play had you not 
also the hope and assurance of a fee?" 

"In defending your guilty client did you declare your 
belief in his innocence?" 

"Yes, I understand, but necessary as it may have been (in 
that it helped to defeat justice and earn your fee) was not your 
declaration a lie?" 

"Do you believe it right to lie for the purpose of circum- 
venting justice? — yes or no?" 

"Do you believe it right to lie for personal gain — ^yesorno?" 

"Then why did you do both?" 

"A man who lies to beat the laws and fill his purse is — 
what?" 

69 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

"In defending a murderer did you ever misrepresent the 
character, acts, motives and intentions of the man that he 
murdered — never mind the purpose and effect of such misrepre- 
sentation — ^yes or no?" 

"That is what we call slander of the dead, is it not?" 

"What is the most accurate name you can think of for one 
who slanders the dead to defeat justice and promote his own 
fortune?" 

"Yes, I know — such practices are allowed by the 'ethics* 
of your profession, but can you point to any evidence that 
they are allowed by Jesus Christ?" 

"If in former trials you have obstructed justice by slander 
of the dead, by falsely affirming the innocence of the guilty, 
by cheating in argument, by deceiving the court whom you are 
sworn to serve and assist, and have done all this for personal 
gain, do you expect, and is it reasonable for you to expect, the 
jury in this case to believe you?" 

"One moment more, please. Did you ever accept an 
annual, or other fee conditioned on your not taking any action 
against a corporation?" 

"While in receipt of such refrainer — I beg you pardon, 
retainer — did you ever prosecute a blackmailer?" 

It will be seen that in testing the credibility of a lawyer 
it is needless to go into his private life and his character as a 
man and a citizen : his professional practices are an ample field 
in which to search for offenses against man and God. Indeed, 
it is sufficient simply to ask him: "What is your view of 'the 
ethics of your profession' as a suitable standard of conduct 
for a pirate of the Spanish Main?" 

The moral sense of the laymen is dimly conscious of some- 
thing wrong in the ethics of the noble profession; the lawyers 

70 



Some Features of the Law 



affirming, rightly enough, a public necessity for them and their 
mercenary services, permit their thrift to construe it vaguely 
as personal justification. But nobody has blown away from 
the matter its brumous encompassment and let in the light upon 
it. It is very simple. 

Is it honorable for a lawyer to try to clear a man that he 
knows deserves conviction? That is not the entire question 
by much. Is it honorable to pretend to believe what you do 
not believe? Is it honorable to lie? I submit that these 
questions are not answered affirmatively by showing the dis- 
advantage to the public and to civilization of a lawyer refus- 
ing to serve a known offender. The popular interest, like any 
other good cause, can be and commonly is, served by foul 
means. Justice itself may be promoted by acts essentially un- 
just. In serving a sordid ambition a powerful scoundrel may 
by acts in themselves wicked augment the prosperity of a whole 
nation. I have not the right to deceive and lie in order to 
advantage my fellowmen, any more than I have the right to 
steal or murder to advantage them, nor have my fellowmen the 
power to grant me that indulgence. 

The question of a lawyer's right to clear a known criminal 
(with the several questions involved) is not answered affirma- 
tively by showing that the law forbids him to decline a case 
for reasons personal to himself — not even if we admit the 
statute's moral authority. Preservation of conscience and 
character is a civic duty, as well as a personal; one's fellow- 
men have a distinct interest in it. That, I admit, is an argument 
rather in the manner of an attorney; clearly enough the intent 
of this statute is to compel an attorney to cheat and lie for any 
rascal that wants him to. In that sense it may be regarded as 
a law softening the rigor of all laws ; it does not mitigate punish- 

71 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

ments, but mitigates the chance of incurring them. The infamy 
of it lies in forbidding an attorney to be a gentleman. Like 
all laws it falls something short of its intent: many attorneys, 
even some who defend that law, are as honorable as is consist- 
ent with the practice of deceit to serve crime. 

It will not do to say that an attorney in defending a client 
is not compelled to cheat and lie. What kind of defense could 
be made by any one who did not profess belief in the innocence 
of his client? — did not affirm it in the most serious and im- 
pressive way? — did not lie? How would it profit the defense 
to be conducted by one who would not meet the prosecution's 
grave asseverations of belief in the prisoner's guilt by equally 
grave assurances of faith in his innocence? And in point of 
fact, when was counsel for the defense ever known to forego 
the advantage of that solemn falsehood? If I am asked what 
would become of accused persons if they had to prove their in- 
nocence to the lawyers before making a defense in court, I reply 
that I do not know; and in my turn I ask: What would be- 
come of Humpty Dumpty if all the king's horses and all the 
king's men were an isosceles triangle ? 

It all amounts to this, that lawyers want clients and are 
not particular about the kind of clients that they get. All this 
is very ugly work, and a public interest that can not be served 
without it would better be unserved. 

I grant, in short, 'tis better all around 
That ambidextrous consciences abound 
In courts of law to do the dirty work 
That self-respecting scavengers would shirk. 
What then? Who serves however clean a plan 
By doing dirty work, he is a dirty man. 
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Some Features of the Law 



But in point of fact I do not "grant" any such thing. It 
is not for the pubHc interest that a rogue have the same freedom 
of defense as an honest man; it should be a good deal harder 
for him. His troubles should begin, not when he seeks acquital, 
but when he seeks counsel. It would be better for the community 
if he could not obtain the services of a reputable attorney, or 
any attorney at all. A defense that can not be made with- 
out his attorney's actual knowledge of his guilt should be im- 
possible to him. Nor should he be permitted to remain off the 
witness stand lest he incriminate himself. It ought to be the 
aim of the court to let him incriminate himself — to make him 
do so if his testimony will. In our courts that natural method 
would serve the ends of justice greatly better than the one that 
we have. Testimony of the guilty would assist in conviction; 
that of the innocent would not. 

As to the general question of a judge's right to inflict 
arbitrary punishment for words that he may be pleased to hold 
disrespectful to himself or another judge, I do not myself 
believe that any such right exists; the practice seems to be 
merely a survival — a heritage from the dark days of irrespon- 
sible power, when the scope of judicial authority had no other 
bounds than fear of the royal gout or indigestion. If in these 
modern days the same right is to exist it may be necessary to 
revive the old checks upon it by restoring the throne. In free- 
ing us from the monarchial chain, the coalition of European 
Powers commonly known in American history as "the valor of 
our forefathers" stripped us starker than they knew. 

Suppose an attorney should find his client's interests im- 
periled by a prejudiced or corrupt judge — what is he to do? 
If he may not make representations to that effect, supporting 
them with evidence, where evidence is possible and by inference 

7Z 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

where it is not, what means of protection shall he venture to 
adopt? If it be urged in objection that judges are never 
prejudiced nor corrupt I confess that I shall have no answer: 
the proposition will deprive me of breath. 

If contempt is not a crime it should not be punished; if 
a crime it should be punished as other crimes are punished — 
by indictment or information, trial by jury if a jury is de- 
manded, with all the safeguards that secure an accused person 
against judicial blunders and judicial bias. The necessity for 
these safeguards is even greater in cases of contempt than 
in others — ^particularly if the prosecuting witness is to sit in 
judgment on his own grievance. That should, of course, 
not be permitted: the trial should take place before another 
judge. 

Why should twelve able-bodied jurymen, with their oaths 
to guide them and the law to back, submit to the dictation of 
one small judge armed with nothing better than an insolent 
assumption of authority? A judge has not the moral right to 
order a jury to acquit, the utmost that he can rightly do is to 
point out what state of the law or facts may seem to him un- 
favorable to conviction. If the jurors, holding a different view, 
persist in conviction the accused will have grounds, doubtless, 
for a new trial. But under no circumstances is a judge justified in 
requiring a responsible human being to disregard the solemn 
obligation of an oath. 

The public ear is dowered with rather more than just 
enough of clotted nonsense about "attacks upon the dignity of 
the Bench," "bringing the judiciary into disrepute" and the 
rueful rest of it. I crave leave to remind the solicitudinarians 
sounding these loud alarums on their several larynges that by 
persons of understanding men are respected, not for what they 

74 



Some Features of the Laiv 



do, but for what they are, and that one pubHc functionary will 
stand as high in their esteem as another if as high in character. 
The dignity of a wise and righteous judge needs not the 
artificial safeguarding which is a heritage of the old days when 
if dissent found a tongue the public executioner cut it out. The 
Bench will be sufficiently respected when it is no longer a place 
where dullards dream and rogues rob — when its personnel 
is no longer chosen in the back-rooms of tipple-shops, forced 
upon yawning conventions and confirmed by the votes of men 
who neither know what the candidates are nor what they 
should be. With the gang that we have and under our system 
must continue to have, respect is out of the question and ought 
to be. They are entitled to just as much of its forms and 
observances as are needful to maintenance of order in their 
courts and fortification of their lawful power — no more. As 
to their silence under criticism, that is as they please. No 
body but themselves is holding their tongues. 

II. 

A law under which the unsuccessful respondent in a divorce 
proceeding may be forbidden to marry again during the life 
of the successful complainant, the latter being subject to no 
such disability, is infamous infinitely. If the disability is in- 
tended as a punishment it is exceptional among legal punish- 
ments in that it is inflicted without conviction, trial or arraign- 
ment, the divorce proceedings being quite another and different 
matter. It is exceptional in that the period of its continuance, 
and therefore the degree of its severity, are indeterminate ; they 
are dependent on no limiting statute, and on neither the will of 
the power inflicting nor the conduct of the person suffering. 

75 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

To sentence a person to a punishment that is to be mild or 
severe according to chance or — ^which is even worse — circum- 
stance, which but one person, and that person not officially con- 
nected with administration of justice, can but partly control, is 
a monstrous perversion of the main principles that are supposed 
to underlie the laws. 

In "the case at bar" it can be nothing to the woman — 
possibly herself remarried — ^whether the man remarries or not; 
that is, can affect only her feelings, and only such of them as 
are least creditable to her. Yet her self-interest is enlisted 
against him to do him incessant dis-service. By merely caring 
for her health she increases the sharpness of his punishment — 
for punishment it is if he feels it such; every hour that she 
wrests from death is added to his "term." The expediency of 
preventing a man from marrying, without having the power to 
prevent him from making his marriage desirable in the interest 
of the public and vital to that of some woman, is not discuss- 
able here. If a man is ever justified in poisoning a woman who 
is no longer his wife it is when, by way of making him miser- 
able, the State has given him, or he supposes it to have given 
him, a direct and distinct interest in her death. 

III. 

With a view, possibly, to promoting respect for law by 
making the statutes so conform to public sentiment that none 
will fall into disesteem and disuse, it has been advocated that 
there be a formal recognition of sex in the penal code, by 
making a difference in the punishment of men and of women 
for the same crimes and misdemeanors. The argument is that 
if women were "provided" with milder punishment juries would 

76 



Some Features of the Latff 



sometimes convict them, whereas they now commonly get otf 
altogether. 

The plan is not so new as might be thought. Many of the 
nations of antiquity of whose laws we have knowledge, and 
nearly all the European nations until within a comparatively 
recent time, punished women differently from men for the same 
offenses. And as recently as the period of the Early Puritan 
in New England women were punished for some offenses which 
men might commit without fear if not without reproach. The 
ducking-stool, for example, was an appliance for softening the 
female temper only. In England women used to be burned at 
the stake for crimes for which men were hanged, roasting being 
regarded as the milder punishment. In point of fact, it was not 
punishment at all, the victim being carefully strangled before 
the fire touched her. Burning was simply a method of dis- 
posing of the body so expeditiously as to give no occasion and 
opportunity for the unseemly social rites commonly performed 
about the scaffold of the erring male by the jocular populace. 
As lately as 1 763 a woman named Margaret Biddingfield 
was burned in Suffolk as an accomplice in the crime of "petty 
treason." She had assisted in the murder of her husband, the 
actual killing being done by a man ; and he was hanged, as no 
doubt he richly deserved. For "coining," too (which was 
"treason"), men were hanged and women burned. This dis- 
tinction between the sexes was maintained until the year of 
grace 1 790, after which female offenders ceased to have "a 
stake in the country," and Hke Hood's martial hero, "enlisted 
in the line." 

In still earlier days, before the advantages of fire were 
understood, our good grandmothers who sinned were admon- 
ished by water — they were drowned ; but in the reign of Henry 

77 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

III a woman was hanged — ^without strangulation, apparently, 
for after a whole day of it she was cut down and pardoned. 
Sorceresses and unfaithful wives were smothered in mud, as 
also were unfaithful wives among the ancient Burgundians. 
The punishment of unfaithful husbands is not of record; we 
only know that there were no austerely virtuous editors to direct 
the finger of public scorn their way. 

Among the Anglo-Saxons, women who had the bad luck to 
be detected in theft were drowned, while men meeting with the 
same mischance died a dry death by hanging. By the early 
Danish laws female thieves were buried alive, whether or not 
from motives of humanity is not now known. This seems to 
have been the fashion in France also, for in 1331 a woman 
named Duplas was scourged and buried alive at Abbeville, 
and in 1460 Perotte Mauger, a receiver of stolen goods, was 
inhumed by order of the Provost of Paris in front of the public 
gibbet. In Germany in the good old days certain kinds of 
female criminals were "impaled," a punishment too grotesquely 
horrible for description, but likely enough considered by the 
simple German of the period conspicuously merciful. 

It is, in short, only recently that the civilized nations 
have placed the sexes on an equality in the matter of the death 
penalty for crime, and the new system is not yet by any means 
universal. That it is a better system than the old, or would 
be if enforced, is a natural presumption from human progress, 
out of which it is evolved. But coincidently with its evolution 
has evolved also a sentiment adverse to punishment of women 
at all. But this sentiment appears to be of independent growth 
and in no way a reaction against that which caused the change. 
To mitigate the severity of the death penalty for women to 
some pleasant form of euthanasia, such as drowning in rose- 

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Some Features of the Law 



water, or in their case to abolish the death penahy altogether 
and make their capital punishment consist in a brief interment 
in a jail with a softened name, would probably do no good, for 
whatever form it might take, it would be, so far as woman is 
concerned, the "extreme penalty" and crowning disgrace, and 
jurors would be as reluctant to inflict it as they now are to 
inflict hanging. 

IV. 

Testators should not, from the snug security of the grave, 
utter a perpetual threat of disinheritance or any other uncom- 
fortable fate to deter an American citizen, even one of his own 
legatees, from applying to the courts of his country for redress 
of any wrong from which he might consider himself as suffering. 
The courts of law ought to be open to any one conceiving him- 
self a victim of injustice, and it should be unlawful to abridge 
the right of complaint by making its exercise more hazardous 
than it naturally is. Doubtless the contesting of wills is a nuis- 
ance, generally speaking, the contestant conspicuously devoid 
of moral worth and the verdict singularly unrighteous; but as 
long as some testators really are daft, or subject to interested 
suasion, or wantonly sinful, they should be denied the power to 
stifle dissent by fining the luckless dissenter. The dead have too 
much to say in this world at the best, and it is monstrous and 
intolerable tyranny for them to stand at the door of the Temple 
of Justice to drive away the suitors that themselves have made. 

Obedience to the commands of the dead should be con- 
ditional upon their good behavior, and it is not good behavior 
to set up a censure of actions at law among the living. If our 
courts are not competent to say what actions are proper to be 
brought and what are unfit to be entertained let us improve them 

79 



The Shadorv on the Dial and other Essays 

until they are competent, or abolish them altogether and re- 
sort to the mild and humane arbitrament of the dice. But while 
courts have the civility to exist they should refuse to surrender 
any part of their duties and responsibilities to such exceedingly 
private persons as those under six feet of earth, or sealed up in 
habitations of hewn stone. Persons no longer affectible by 
human events should be denied a voice in determining the 
character and trend of them. Respect for the wishes of the 
dead is a tender and beautiful sentiment, certainly. Unfor- 
tunately, it can not be ascertained that they have any wishes. 
What commonly go by that name are wishes once entertained 
by living persons who are now dead, and who in dying re- 
nounced them, along with everything else. Like those who 
entertained them, the wishes are no longer in existence. "The 
wishes of the dead," therefore, are not wishes, and are not of 
the dead. Why they should have anything more than a 
sentimental influence upon those still in the flesh, and be a fac- 
tor to be reckoned with in the practical affairs of the super- 
graminous world, is a question to which the merely human 
understanding can find no answer, and it must be referred to the 
lawyers. When "from the tombs a doleful sound" is vented, 
and "thine ear" is invited to "attend the cry," an intelligent 
forethought will suggest that you inquire if it is anything about 
property. If so pass on — that is no sacred spot. 

V. 

Much of the testimony in French courts, civil and martial, 
appears to consist of personal impressions and opinions of the 
witnesses. All very improper and mischievous, no doubt, if — if 
what? Why, obviously, if the judges are unfit to sit in 

80 



Some Features of the Law 



judgment. By designating them to sit the designating power 
assumes their fitness — assumes that they know enough to take 
such things for what they are worth, to make the necessary al- 
lowances ; if needful, to disregard a witness's opinion altogether. 
I do not know if they ai-e fit. I do not know that they do 
make the needful allowances. It is by no means clear to me 
that any judge or juror, French, American or Patagonian, 
is competent to ascertain the truth when lying witnesses are 
trying to conceal it under the direction of skilled and conscien- 
tiousless attorneys licensed to deceive. But his competence is 
a basic assumption of the law vesting him with the duty of 
deciding. Having chosen him for that duty the French law 
very logically lets him alone to decide for himself what is 
evidence and what is not. It does not trust him a little but 
altogether. It puts him under conditions familiar to him — 
makes him accessible to just such influences and suasions as he 
is accustomed to when making conscious and unconscious de- 
cisions in his personal affairs. 

There may be a distinct gain to justice in permitting a 
witness to say whatever he wants to say. If he is telling the 
truth he will not contradict himself; if he is lying the more rope 
he is given the more surely he will entangle himself. To the 
service of that end defendants and prisoners should, I think, 
be compelled to testify and denied the advantage of declining to 
answer, for silence is the refuge of guilt. In endeavoring by 
austere means to make an accused person incriminate himself 
the French judge logically applies the same principle that a 
parent uses with a suspected child. When the Grandfather of 
His Country arraigned the wee George Washington for arbor- 
icide the accused was not carefully instructed that he need not 
answer if a truthful answer would tend to convict him. If 

81 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essa})s 

he had refused to answer he would indubitably have been 
lambasted until he did answer, as right richly he would have 
deserved to be. 

The custom of permitting a witness to wander at will over 
the entire field of knowledge, hearsay, surmise and opinion 
has several distinct advantages over our practice. In giving 
hearsay evidence, for example, he may suggest a new and 
important witness of whom the counsel for the other side would 
not otherwise have heard, and who can then be brought into 
court. On some unguarded and apparently irrelevant state- 
ment he may open an entirely new line of inquiry, or throw 
upon the case a flood of light. Everyone knows what revela- 
tions are sometimes evoked by apparently the most insignifi- 
cant remarks. Why should justice be denied a chance to profit 
that way? 

There is a still greater advantage in the French "method.** 
By giving a witness free rein in expression of his personal opin- 
ions and feelings we should be able to calculate his frame 
of mind, his good or ill will to the prosecution or defense and, 
therefore, to a certain extent his credibility. In our courts he 
is able by a little solemn perjury to conceal all this, even from 
himself, and pose as an impartial witness, when in truth, with 
regard to the accused, he is full of rancor or reeking with 
compassion. 

In theory our system is perfect. TTie accused is prosecuted 
by a public officer, who having no interest in his conviction, 
will serve the State without mischievous zeal and perform his 
disagreeable task with fairness and consideration. He is per- 
mitted to entrust his defense to another officer, whose duty it is 
to make a rigidly truthful and candid presentation of his case 
in order to assist the court to a just decision. The jurors, if 

82 



Some Features of the Latv 



there are jurors, are neither friendly nor hostile, are open- 
minded, intelligent and conscientious. As to the witnesses, are 
they not sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth (in so far as they 
are permitted) and nothing but the truth? What could be 
finer and better than all this? — what could more certainly 
assure justice? How close the resemblance is between this 
ideal picture and what actually occurs all know, or should 
know. The judge is commonly an ignoramus incapable of 
logical thought and with little sense of the dread and awful 
nature of his responsibility. The prosecuting attorney thinks 
it due to his reputation to "make a record" and tries to convict 
by hook or crook, even when he is himself persuaded of the 
defendant's innocence. Counsel for the defense is equally un- 
scrupulous for acquittal, and both, having industriously coached 
their witnesses, contend against each other in deceiving the 
court by every artifice of which they are masters. Witnesses 
on both sides perjure themselves freely and with almost perfect 
immunity if detected. At the close of it all the poor weary 
jurors, hopelessly bewildered and dumbly resentful of their 
duping, render a random or compromise verdict, or one which 
best expresses their secret animosity to the lawyer they like 
least or their faith in the newspapers which they have diligently 
and disobediently read every night. Commenting upon 
Rabelais' old judge who, when impeached for an outrageous 
decision, pleaded his defective eye-sight which made him mis- 
count the spots on the dice, the most distinguished lawyer of 
my acquaintance seriously assured me that if all the cases with 
which he had been connected had been decided with the dice 
substantial justice would have been done more frequently than 
it was done. If that is true, or nearly true, and I believe it, 

83 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

the American*s right to sneer at the Frenchman's "judicial 
methods" is still an open question. 

It is urged that the corrupt practices in our courts of law be 
uncovered to public view, whenever that is possible, by that 
impeccable censor, the press. Exposure of rascality is very 
good — better, apparently for rascals than for anybody else, for 
it usually suggests something rascally which they had over- 
looked, and so familiarizes the public with crime that crime no 
longer begets loathing. If the newspapers of the country are 
really concerned about corrupter practices than their own and 
willing to bring our courts up to the English standard there 
is something better than exposure — which fatigues. Let the 
newspapers set about creating a public opinion favorable to 
non-elective judges, well paid, powerful to command respect 
and holding office for life or good behavior. That is the 
only way to get good men and great lawyers on the Bench. 
As matters are, we stand and cry for what the English have 
and rail at the way they get it. Our boss-made, press-ridden 
and mob-fearing paupers and ignoramuses of the Bench give us 
as good a quality of justice as we merit. A better quality 
awaits us whenever the will to have it is attended by the sense 
to take it. 



84 



Arbitration 



Arbitration 




HE universal cry for arbitration is either dis- 
honest or unwise. For every evil there are 
quack remedies galore — especially for every 
evil that is irremediable. Of this order of 
remedies is arbitration, for of this order of evils is the in- 
adequate wage of manual labor. Since the beginning of 
authentic history everything has been tried in the hope of divorc- 
ing poverty and labor, but nothing has parted them. It is not 
conceivable that anything ever will; success of arbitration, 
antecedently improbable, is demonstrably impossible. Most of 
the work of the world is hard, disagreeable work, requiring 
little intelligence. Most of the people of the world are unin- 
telligent — unfit to do any other work. If it were not done by 
them it would not be done, and it is the basic work. With- 
draw them from it and the whole superstructure would topple 
and fall. Yet there is too little of the work, and there are so 
many incapable of doing anything else that adequate return is 
out of the question. For the laboring class there is no hope of 
an existence that is comfortable in comparison with that of 
the other class; the hope of an individual laborer lies in the 
possibility of fitting himself for higher employment — employ- 
ment of the head; not manual but cerebral labor. While sel- 
fishness remains the main ingredient of human nature (and a 
survey of the centuries accessible to examination shows but a 
slow and intermittent decrease) the cerebral workers, being 

87 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

the wiser and no better, will manage to take the greater profit. 
In justice it must be said of them that they extend a warm and 
sincere invitation to their ranks, and take "apprentices;" every 
chance of education that the other class enjoys is proof of that. 

All this is perhaps a trifle abstruse; let us, then, look at 
arbitration more nearly ; in our time it is, in form at least, some- 
thing new. It began as "international arbitration," which 
already, in settling a few disputes of no great importance, has 
shown itself a dangerous remedy. In the necessary negotiation 
to determine exactly what points to submit, to whom, and how, 
and where, and when to submit them, and how to carry out 
the arbitrator's decision, scores of questions are raised, upon 
each of which it is as easy to disagree and fight as upon the 
original issue. International arbitration may be defined as the 
substitution of many burning questions for a smouldering one; 
for disputes that have reached a really acute stage are not sub- 
mitted. The animosities that it has kindled have been hotter 
than those it has quenched. 

Industrial arbitration is no better; it is manifestly worse, 
and any law enforcing it, and enforcing compliance with its 
decisions, is absurd and mischievous. "Compulsory arbitra- 
tion" is not arbitration, the essence whereof is voluntary sub- 
mission of differences and voluntary submission to judgment. 
If either reference or obedience is enforced the arbitrators are 
simply a court with no powers to do anything but apply the 
law. Proponents of the fad would do well to consider this: 
If a party to a labor dispute is compelled to invoke and obey 
a decision of arbitrators that decision must follow strictly the 
line of law ; the smallest invasion of any constitutional, statutory 
or common-law right will enable him to upset the whole judg- 
ment. No legislative body can establish a tribunal empowered 



Arbitration 

to make and enforce illegal or extra legal decisions; for 
making and enforcing legal ones the tribunals that we already 
have are sufficient. This talk of "compulsory arbitration" is 
the maddest nonsense that the industrial situation has yet 
evolved. Doubtless it is sent upon us for our sins ; but had we 
not already a plague of inveracity? 

Arbitration of labor disputes means compromise with the 
unions. It can, in this country, mean nothing else, for the law 
would not survive a half-dozen failures to concede some part of 
their demands, however reasonless. By repeated strikes they 
would eventually get all their original demand and as much 
more as on second thought they might choose to ask for. Each 
concession would be, as it is now, followed by a new demand, 
and the first arbitrators might as well allow them all that they 
demand and all that they mean to demand hereafter. 

Would not employers be equally unscrupulous? They 
would not. They could not afford the disturbance, the stoppage 
of the business, the risk of unfair decisions in a country where 
it is "popular" to favor and encourage, not the just, but the 
poor. The labor leaders have nothing to lose, not even their 
jobs, for their work is labor leading. Their dupes, by the way, 
would be dupes no longer, for with enforced arbitration the 
game of "follow my leader" would pay until there should be 
nothing to follow him to but empty treasuries of dead in- 
dustries in an extinct civilization. If there must be enforced 
arbitration it should at least not apply to that sum of all 
impudent rascalities, the "sympathetic strike." 

As to the men who have set up the monstrous claim asserted 
by the "sympathetic strike," I shall refer to the atfair of 1 904. 
If it was creditable in them to feel so much concern about a few 
hundred aliens in Illinois, how about the grievances of the 

89 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essayfs 

whole body of their countrymen in California? When their 
employers, who they confess were good to them, were plunder- 
ing the Califomians, they did not strike, sympathetically nor 
otherwise. Year after year the railway companies picked the 
pockets of the Califomians; corrupted their courts and legisla- 
tures; laid its Briarean hands in exaction upon every industry 
and interest; filled the land with lies and false reasoning; threw 
honest men into prisons cind locked the gates of them against 
thieves and assassins; by open defiance of the tax collector 
denied to children of the poor the advantages of education — did 
all this and more, and these honest working men stood loyally 
by it, sharing in wages its dishonest gains, receivers, in one 
sense, of stolen goods. The groans of their neighbors were 
nothing to them; even the wrongs of themselves, their wives 
and their children did not stir them to revolt. On every 
breeze that blew, this great chorus of cries and curses was 
borne past their ears unheeded. Why did they not strike then? 
Where then were their fiery altruists and storm-petrels of in- 
dustrial disorder? No! — the ingenious gods who have invented 
the Debses and Gomperses, and humorously branded them 
with names that would make a cat laugh, have never put it 
into their cold selfish hearts to order out their misguided 
followers to redress a public wrong, but only to inflict one — to 
avenge a personal humiliation, gratify an appetite for notoriety, 
slake a thirst for the intoxicating cup of power, or punish the 
crime of prosperity. 

It is a practical, an illogical, a turbulent time, yes; it 
always is. The age of Jesus Christ was a practical age, yet 
Jesus Christ was sweetly impractical. In an illogical period 
Socrates reasoned clearly, and logically died for it. Nero*s 
time was a time of turbulence, yet Seneca's mind was not dis- 

90 



Arbitration 

turbed, nor his conscience perverted. Compare their fame with 
the everlasting infamy that time has fixed upon the names of 
the Jack Cades, the Robespierres, the Tomaso Nielos — guides 
and gods of the "fierce democracies" which rise with a sicken- 
ing periodicity to defile the page of history with a quickly fad- 
ing mark of blood and fire, their own awful example their sole 
contribution to the good of mankind. To be a child of your 
time, imbued with its spirit and endowed with its aims — that is 
to petition Posterity for a niche in the Temple of Shame. 

No strike of any prominence ever takes place in this country 
without the concomitants of violence and destruction of pro- 
perty, and usually murder. These cheerful incidents one who 
does not personally suffer them can endure with considerable 
fortitude, but the sniveling, hypocritical condemnation of them 
by the press that has instigated them and the strikers who have 
planned and executed them, and who invariably ascribe them 
to those whom they most injure ; the solemn offers of the leaders 
to assist in protecting the imperiled property and avenging 
the dead, while openly employing counsel for every incendiary 
and assassin arrested in spite of them — these are pretty hard to 
bear. A strike means (for it includes as its main method) 
violence, lawlessness, destruction of the property of others than 
the strikers, riot and if necessary bloodshed. Even when the 
strikers themselves have no hand in these crimes they are 
morally liable for the foreknown consequences of their act. 
Nay, they are morally liable for all the consequences — all the 
inconveniences and losses to the community, all the sufferings of 
the poor entailed by interruptions of trade, all the privations of 
other workingmen whom a selfish attention to their own sup- 
posed advantage throws out of the closed industries. They are 
liable in morals and should be made so in law — only that 

91 



The Shadoiv on the Dial and other Essay^s 

strikes are needless. It is not worth while to create a multitude 
of complex criminal responsibilities for acts which can easily 
be prevented by a single and simple one. How? 

First, I should like to point out that we are hearing a deal 
too much about a man*s inalienable right to work or play, at 
his own sovereign will. In so far as that means — and it is 
always used to mean — ^his right to quit any kind of work at 
any moment, without notice and regardless of consequences to 
others, it is false; there is no such moral right, and the law 
should have at least a speaking acquaintance with morality. 
What is mischievous should be illegal. The various interests 
of civilization are so complex, delicate, intertangled and inter- 
dependent that no man, and no set of men, should have power 
to throw the entire scheme into confusion and disorder for pro- 
motion of a trumpery principle or a class advantage. In deal- 
ing with corporations we recognize that. If for any selfish 
purpose the trade union of railway managers had done what 
their sacred brakemen and divine firemen did — ^had decreed 
that "no wheel should turn" until Mr. Pullman's men should 
return to work — they would have found themselves all in jail 
the second day. Their right to quit work was not conceded: 
they lacked that authenticating credential of moral and legal 
irresponsibility, an indurated palm. In a small lockout affecting 
a mill or two the offender finds a half-hearted support in the 
law if he is willing to pay enough deputy sheriffs; but even 
then he is mounted by the hobnailed populace, at its back the 
daily newspapers, clamoring and spitting like cats. But let 
the manager of a great railway discharge all its men without 
warning and "kill" its own engines! Then see what you will 
see. To commit a wrong so gigantic with impunity a man must 
wear overalls. 

92 



Arbitration 

How prevent anybody from committing it? How break up 
this regime of strikes and boycotts and lockouts, more dis- 
astrous to others than to those at whom the blows are aimed — 
than to those, even, who deliver them? How make all those 
concerned in the management and operation of great industries, 
about which have grown up tangles of related and dependent 
interests, conduct them with some regard to the welfare of 
others? Before committing ourselves to the dubious and irre- 
traceable course of "Government ownership," or to the in- 
fectious expedient of a "pension system," is there anything 
of promise yet untried? — anything of superior simplicity and 
easier application? I think so. Make a breach of labor con- 
tract by either party to it a criminal offense punishable by im- 
prisonment. "Fine or imprisonment" will not do — the em- 
ployee, unable to pay the fine, would commonly go to jail, the 
employer seldom. That would not be fair. 

The purpose of such a law is apparent: Labor contracts 
would then be drawn for a certain time, securing both em- 
ployer and employee and (which is more important) helpless 
persons in related and dependent industries — the whole public, 
in fact — against sudden and disastrous action by either 
"capital" or "labor" for accomplishment of a purely selfish or 
frankly impudent end. A strike or lockout compelled to 
announce itself thirty days in advance would be innocuous to 
the public, whilst securing to the party of initiation all the 
advantages that anybody professes to want — all but the 
advantage of ruining others and of successfully defying the 
laws. 

Under the present regime labor contracts are useless ; either 
party can violate them with impunity. They offer redress only 
through a civil suit for damages, and the employee commonly 

93 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 



has nothing with which to conduct an action or satisfy a judg- 
ment. The consequence is seen in the incessant and increasing 
industrial disturbances, with their ever-attendant crimes against 
property, Hfe and Hberty — disturbances which by driving 
capital to investments in which it needs employ no labor, 
do more than all the other causes so glibly enumerated by every 
newspaper and politician, though by no two alike, to bring 
about the "hard times" — ^which in their turn cause further and 
worse disturbzmces. 



94 



Industrial 
Discontent 



Industrial Discontent 




HE time seems to have come when the two 
antagonistic elements of American society should, 
and could afford to, throw off their disguise 
and frankly declare their principles and pur- 
poses. But what, it may be asked, are the two antagonistic 
elements? Dividing lines parting the population into two 
camps more or less hostile may be drawn variously; for ex- 
ample, one may be run between the law-abiding and the 
criminal class. But the elements to which reference is here 
made are those immemorable and implacable foes which the 
slang of modern economics roughly and loosely distinguishes 
as "Capital" and "Labor." A more accurate classification — 
as accurate a one as it is possible to make — would designate 
them as those who do muscular labor and those who do not. 
The distinction between rich and poor does not serve: to the 
laborer the rich man who works with his hands is not objection- 
able; the poor man who does not, is. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, and alike by those whose necessities compel them to 
perform it and those whose better fortune enables them to 
avoid it, manual labor is considered the most insufferable of 
human pursuits. It is a pill that the Tolstois, the "com- 
munities" and the "Knights" of Labor can not sugarcoat. We 
may prate of the dignity of labor; emblazon its praise upon 
banners; set apart a day on which to stop work and celebrate 
it; shout our teeth loose in its glorification — and, God help our 
fool souls to better sense, we think we mean it all ! 

If labor is so good and great a thing let all be thankful, for 
: , 97 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

all can have as much of it as may be desired. The eight-hour 
law is not mandatory to the laborer, nor does possession of 
leisure entail idleness. It is permitted to the clerk, the shop- 
man, the street peddler — to all who live by the light employ- 
ment of keeping the wolf from the door without eating him — 
to abandon their ignoble callings, seize the shovel, the axe and 
the sledge-hammer and lay about them right sturdily, to the 
ample gratification of their desire. And those who are engaged 
in more profitable vocations will find that with a part of their 
incomes they can purchase from their employers the right to 
work as hard as they like in even the dullest times. 

Manual labor has nothing of dignity, nothing of beauty. It 
is a hard, imperious and dispiriting necessity. He who is con- 
demned to it feels that it sets upon his brow the brand of in- 
tellectual inferiority. And that brand of servitude never 
ceases to bum. In no country and at no time has the laborer 
had a kindly feeling for the rest of us, for everywhere and 
always has he heard in our patronising platitudes the note of 
contempt. In his repression, in the denying him the opportunity 
to avenge his real and imaginary wrongs, government finds its 
main usefulness, activity and justification. Jefferson's dictum 
that governments are instituted among men in order to secure 
them in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is luminous 
nonsense. Governments are not instituted; they grow. They 
are evolved out of the necessity of protecting from the hand- 
worker the life and property of the brain worker and the idler. 
The first is the most dangerous because the most numerous and 
the least content. Take from the science and the art of 
government, and from its methods, whatever has had its origin 
in the consciousness of his ill-will and the fear of his power and 

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Industrial Discontent 



what have you left? A pure republic — that is to say, no 
government. 

I should like it understood that, if not absolutely devoid 
of preferences and prejudices, I at least believe myself to be; 
that except as to result I think no more of one form of govern- 
ment than of another; and that with reference to results all 
forms seem to me bad, but bad in different degrees. If asked 
my opinion as to the results of our own, I should point to Home- 
stead, to Wardner, to Buffalo, to Coal Creek, to the inter- 
minable tale of unpunished murders by individuals and by 
mobs, to legislatures and courts unspeakably corrupt and ex- 
ecutives of criminal cowardice, to the prevalence and immunity 
of plundering trusts and corporations and the monstrous mul- 
tiplication of millionaires. I should invite attention to the pen- 
sion roll, to the similar and incredible extravagance of Repub- 
lican and Democratic "Houses" — a plague o' them both! If 
addressing Democrats only, I should mention the protective 
tariff; if Republicans, the hill-tribe clamor for free coinage of 
silver. I should call to mind the existence of prosperous activity 
of a thousand lying secret societies having for their sole object 
mitigation of republican simplicity by means of pageantry and 
costumes grotesquely resembling those of kings and courtiers, 
and titles of address and courtesy exalted enough to draw 
laughter from an ox. 

In contemplation of these and a hundred other "results," 
no less shameful in themselves than significant of the deeper 
shame beneath and prophetic of the blacker shame to come, I 
should say: "Behold the outcome of hardly more than a 
century of government by the people! Behold the superstruc- 
ture whose foundations our forefathers laid upon the unstable 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essa})s 

overgrowth of popular caprice surfacing the unplummeted 
abysm of human depravity! Behold the reality behind our 
dream of the efficacy of forms, the saving grace of principles, 
the magic of words! We have believed in the wisdom of 
majorities and are fooled; trusted to the good honor of numbers, 
and are betrayed. Our touching faith in the liberty of the 
rascal, our strange conviction that anarchy making proselytes 
and bombs is less dangerous than anarchy with a shut mouth 
and a watched hand — lo, this is the beginning of the end of 
the dream!" 

Our no Government has broken down at every point, and 
the two irreconcilable elements whose suspensions of hostilities 
are mistaken for peace are about to try their hands at each 
other's tempting display of throats. There is no longer so 
much as a pretense of amity; apparently there will not much 
longer be a pretense of regard for mercy and morals. Already 
"industrial discontent" has attained to the magnitude of war. 
It is important, then, that there be an understanding of prin- 
ciples and purposes. As the combatants will not define their 
positions truthfully by words, let us see if it can be inferred from 
the actions which are said to speak more plainly. If one of the 
really able men who now "direct the destinies" of the labor 
organizations in this country, could be enticed into the Palace 
of Truth and "examined" by a skilful catechist he would in- 
dubitably say something like this: 

"Our ultimate purpose is abolition of the distinction be- 
tween employer and employee, which is but a modification of 
that between master and slave. 

"We propose that the laborer shall be chief owner of all 
the property and profits of the enterprise in which he is engaged, 
and have through his union a controlling voice in all its affairs. 

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"We propose to overthrow the system under which a man 
can grow richer by working with his head than with his hands, 
and prevent the man who works with neither from having any- 
thing at all. 

"In the attainment of these ends any means is to be judged, 
as to its fitness for our use, with sole regard to its efficacy. We 
shall punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty. We shall 
destroy property and life under such circumstances and to such 
an extent as may seem to us expedient. Falsehood, treachery, 
arson, assassination, all these we look upon as legitimate if 
effective. 

"The rules of 'civilized warfare' we shall not observe, but 
shall put prisoners to death or torture them, as we please. 

"We do not recognize a non-union man's right to labor, 
nor to live. The right to strike includes the right to strike him." 

Doubtless all that (and "the half is not told") sounds to 
the unobservant like a harsh exaggeration, an imaginative 
travesty of the principles of labor organizations. It is not a 
travesty; it has no element of exaggeration. Not in the last 
twenty-five years has a great strike or lockout occurred in this 
country without supplying facts, notorious and undisputed, 
upon which some of these confessions of faith are founded. 
The war is practically a servile insurrection, and servile insur- 
rections are today what they ever were: the most cruel and 
ferocious of all manifestations of human hate. Emancipation 
is rough work; when he who would be free, himself strikes the 
blow, he can not consider too curiously with what he strikes 
it nor upon whom it falls. It will profit you to understand, my 
fine gentleman with the soft hands, the character of that which 
is confronting you. You are not threatened with a bombard- 
ment of roses. 

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The ShadoTi> on the Dial and other Essays 

Let us look into the other camp, where General Hardhead 
is so engrossed with his own greatness and power as not 
clearly to hear the shots on his picket line. Suppose we hyp- 
notize him and make him open his "shut soul" to our searching. 
He will say something like this: 

"In the first place, I claim the right to own and enclose for 
my own use or disuse as much of the earth's surface as I am 
desirous and able to procure. I and my kind have made laws 
confirming us in the occupancy of the entire habitable and 
arable area as fast as we can get it. To the objection that 
this must eventually here, as it has actually done elsewhere, 
deprive the rest of you places upon which legally to be bora, 
and exclude you after surreptitious birth as trespassers from all 
chance to procure directly the fruits of the earth, I reply that 
you can be bom at sea and eat fish. 

"I claim the right to induce you, by offer of employment, to 
colonize yourselves and families about my factories, and then 
arbitrarily, by withdrawing the employment, break up in a day 
the homes that you have been years in acquiring where it is no 
longer possible for you to procure work. 

"In determining your rate of wages when I employ you, I 
claim the right to make your necessities a factor in the problem, 
thus making your misfortunes cumulative. By the law of 
supply and demand (God bless its expounder!) the less you 
have and the less chance to get more, the more I have the right 
to take from you in labor and the less I am bound to give you 
in wages. 

"I claim the right to ignore the officers of the peace and 
maintain a private army to subdue you when you rise. 

"I claim the right to make you suffer, by creating for my 
advantage an artificial scarcity of the necessaries of life. 

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Industrial Discontent 



"I claim the right to employ the large powers of the govern- 
ment in advancing my private welfare. 

"As to falsehood, treachery and the other military virtues 
with which you threaten me, I shall go, in them, as far as you ; 
but from arson and assassination I recoil with horror. You 
see you have very little to bum, and you are not more than half 
alive anyhow." 

That, I submit, is a pretty fair definition of the position 
of the wealthy man who works with his head. It seems worth 
while to put it on record while he is extant to challenge or 
verify; for the probability is that unless he mend his ways 
he will not much longer be wealthy, work, nor have a head. 

II. 

In discussion of the misdoings at Homestead and Coeur d' 
Alene it is amusing to observe all the champions of law and 
order gravely prating of "principles" and declaring with all 
the solemnity of owls that these sacred things have been vio- 
lated. On that ground they have the argument all their own 
way. Indubitably there is hardly a fundamental principle of 
law emd morals that the rioting laborers have not footballed out 
of the field of consideration. Indubitably, too, in doing so 
they have forfeited as they must have expected to forfeit, all 
the "moral support" for which they did not care a tinker's im- 
precation. If there were any question of their culpability this 
solemn insistence upon it would lack something of the humor 
with which it is now invested and which saves the observer from 
death by dejection. 

It is not only in discussions of the "labor situation" that we 
hear this eternal babble of "principles.*' It is never out of ear, 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

and in politics is especially clamant. Every success in an elec- 
tion is yawped of as "a triumph of Republican (or Demo- 
cratic) principles." But neither in politics nor in the quarrels 
of laborers and their employers have principles a place as 
"factors in the problem." Their use is to supply to both com- 
batants a vocabulary of accusation and appeal. All the fierce 
talk of an antagonist's violation of those eternal principles upon 
which organized society is founded — and the rest of it — what 
is it but the cry of the dog with the chewed ear? The dog 
that is chewing foregoes the advantage of song. 

Human contests engaging any number of contestants are 
not struggles of principles but struggles of interests; and this is 
no less true of those decided by the ballot than of those in 
which the franker bullet gives judgment. Nor, but from con- 
siderations of prudence and expediency, will either party hesi- 
tate to transgress the limits of the law and outrage the sense 
of right. At Homestead and Wardner the laborers committed 
robbery, pillage and murder, as striking workmen invariably 
do when they dare, and as cowardly newspapers and scoundrel 
politicians encourage them in doing. But what would you 
have? They conceive it to be to their interest to do these 
things. If capitalists conceive it to be to theirs they too would 
do them. They do not do them for their interest lies in the 
supremacy of the law — under which they can suffer loss but 
do not suffer hunger. 

"But they do murder," say the labor unions; "they bring 
in gangs of armed mercenaries who shoot down honest work- 
men striving for their rights." This is the baldest nonsense, as 
they know very well who utter it. The Pinkerton men are 
mere mercenaries and have no right place in our system, but 
there have been no instances of their attacking men not engaged 

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Industrial Discontent 



in some unlawful prank. In the fight at Homestead the work- 
men were actually intrenched on premises belonging to the other 
side, where they had not the ghost of a legal right to be. 
American working men are not fools; they know well enough 
when they are rogues. But confession is not among the military 
virtues, and the question. Is roguery expedient? is not so simple 
that it can be determined by asking the first preacher you meet. 

It would be very nice and fine all round if idle workmen 
would not riot nor idle employers meet force with force, but 
invoke the impossible Sheriff. When the Dragon has been 
chained in the Bottomless Pit and we are living under the rule 
of the saints, things will be so ordered, but in these rascal times 
"revolutions are not made with rosewater," and this is a 
revolution. What is being revolutionized is the relation 
between our old friends. Capital and Labor. The relation 
has already been altered many times, doubtless ; once, we know, 
within the period covered by history, at least in the countries 
that we call civilized. The relation was formerly a severely 
simple one — the capitalist owned the laborer. Of the difficulty 
and the cost of abolishing that system it is needless to speak at 
length. Through centuries of time and with an appalling 
sacrifice of life the effort has gone on, a continuous war 
characterized by monstrous infractions of law and morals, by 
incalculable cruelty and crime. Our own generation has 
witnessed the culminating triumphs of this revolution, and of 
its three mightiest leaders the assassination of two, the death in 
exile of the third. And now, while still the clank of the 
falling chains is echoing through the world, and still a mighty 
multitude of the world's workers is in bondage under the old 
system, the others, for whose liberation was all this "expense 
of spirit in a waste of shame," are sharply challenging the 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

advantage of the new. The new is, in truth, breaking down at 
every point. The relation of employer and employee is giving 
but little better satisfaction than that of master and slave. 
The difference between the two is, indeed, not nearly so broad 
as we persuade ourselves to think it. In many of the industries 
there is practically no difference at all, and the tendency is 
more and more to effacement of the difference where it exists. 

Labor unions, strikes and rioting are no new remedies for this 
insidious disorder ; they were common in ancient Rome and still 
more ancient Egypt. In the twenty-ninth year of Rameses III 
a deputation of workmen employed in the Theban necropo- 
lis met the superintendent and the priests with a statement of 
their grievances. "Behold,'* said the spokesman, "we are 
brought to the verge of famine. We have neither food, nor oil, 
nor clothing; we have no fish; we have no vegetables. Already 
we have sent up a petition to our sovereign lord the Pharaoh, 
praying that he will give us these things and we are going to 
appeal to the Governor that we may have the wherewithal to 
live." The response to this complaint was one day's rations of 
corn. This appears to have been enough only while it lasted, 
for a few weeks later the workmen were in open revolt. Thrice 
they broke out of their quarter, rioting like mad and defying 
the police. Whether they were finally shot full of arrows by 
the Pinkerton men of the period the record does not state. 

"Organized discontent" in the laboring population is no 
new thing under the sun, but in this century and country it has 
a new opportunity and Omniscience alone can forecast the out- 
come. Of one thing we may be very sure, and the sooner the 
"capitalist" can persuade himself to discern it the sooner will 
his eyes guard his neck: the relations between those who are 
able to live without physical toil and those who are not are a 

106 



Industrial Discontent 



long way from final adjustment, but are about to undergo a pro- 
found and essential alteration. That this is to come by peace- 
ful evolution is a hope which has nothing in history to sustain it 
There are to be bloody noses and cracked crowns, and the 
good people who suffer themselves to be shocked by such things 
in others will have a chance to try them for themselves. The 
working man is not troubling himself greatly about a just allot- 
ment of these blessings; so that the greater part go to those who 
do not work with their hands he will not consider too curiously 
any person's claim to exemption. It would perhaps better 
harmonize with his sense of the fitness of things (as it would, 
no doubt, with that of the angels) if the advantages of the 
transitional period fell mostly to the share of such star-spangled 
impostors as Andrew Carnegie; but almost any distribution 
that is sufficiently objectionable as a whole to the other side will 
be acceptable to the distributor. In the mean time it is to be 
wished that the moralizers and homilizers who prate of "prin- 
ciples" may have a little damnation dealt out to them on 
account. The head that is unable to entertain a philosophical 
view of the situation would be notably advantaged by removal. 

III. 

It is the immigration of "the oppressed of all nations'* that 
has made this country one of the worst on the face of the 
earth. The change from good to bad took place within a 
generation — so quickly that few of us have had the nimble- 
ness of apprehension to "get it through our heads." We go 
on screaming our eagle in the self-same note of triumph that 
we were taught at our fathers' knees before the eagle became a 
buzzard. America is still "an asylum for the oppressed ;" and 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

still, as always and everywhere, the oppressed are unworthy of 
asylum, avenging upon those who give them sanctuary the 
wrongs from which they fled. The saddest thing about oppres- 
sion is that it makes its victims unfit for anything but to be 
oppressed — makes them dangerous alike to their tyrants, their 
saviors and themselves. In the end they turn out to be fairly 
energetic oppressors. The gentleman in the cesspool invites 
compassion, certainly, but we may be very well assured, before 
undertaking his relief without a pole, that his conception of a 
prosperous life is merely to have his nose above the surface 
with another gentleman underfoot. 

All languages are spoken in Hell, but chiefly those of 
Southeastern Europe. I do not say that a man fresh from the 
fields or the factories of Europe — even of Southeastern Europe 
— may not be a good man ; I say only that, as a matter of fact, 
he commonly is not. In nine instances in ten he is a brute 
whom it would be God's mercy to drown on his arrival, for he 
is constitutionally unhappy. 

Let us not deny him his grievance: he works — when he 
works — for men no better than himself. He is required, in 
many instances, to take a part of his pay in "truck" at prices 
of breathless altitude; and the pay itself is inadequate — 
hardly more than double what he could get in his own country. 
Against all this his howl is justified; but his noting and assas- 
sination are not — not even when directed against the property 
and persons of his employers. When directed against the 
persons of other laborers, who choose to exercise the funda- 
mental human right to work for whom and for what pay they 
please — ^when he denies this right, and with it the right of 
organized society to exist, the necessity of shooting him is not 
only apparent; it is conspicuous and imperative. That he and 

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Industrial Discontent 



his horrible kind, of whatever nationahty, are usually forgiven 
this just debt of nature, and suffered to execute, like rivers, 
their annual spring rise, constitutes the most valid of the many 
indictments that decent Americans by birth or adoption find 
against the feeble form of government under which their 
country groans. A nation that will not enforce its laws has no 
claim to the respect and allegiance of its people. 

This "citizen soldiery" business is a ghastly failure. The 
National Guard is not worth the price of its uniforms. It is 
intended to be a Greater Constabulary: its purpose is to sup- 
press disorders with which the civil authorities are too feeble to 
cope. How often does it do so? Nine times in ten it frater- 
nizes with, or is cowed or beaten by the savage mobs which it 
is called upon to kill. In a country with a competent militia and 
competent men to use it there would be crime enough and some 
to spare, but no rioting. Rioting in a Republic is without a 
shadow of excuse. If we have bad laws, or if our good laws 
are not enforced; if corporations and capital are "tyrannous 
and strong;" if white men murder one another and black men 
outrage white women, all this is our own fault — the fault of 
those, among others, who seek redress or revenge by rioting 
and lynching. The people have always as good government, as 
good industrial conditions, as effective protection of person, 
property and liberty, as they deserve. They can have what 
ever they have the honesty to desire and the sense to set about 
getting in the right way. If as citizens of a Republic we lack 
the virtue and intelligence rightly to use the supreme power of 
the ballot so that it 

"executes a freeman's will 
As lightning does the will of God" 
we are unfit to be citizens of a Republic, undeserving of peace, 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

prosperity and liberty, and have no right to rise against con- 
ditions due to our own moral and intellectual delinquency. 
There is a simple way. Messieurs the Masses to correct public 
evils: put wise and good men into power. If you can not do 
that for you are not yourselves wise, or will not for you are not 
yourselves good, you deserve to be oppressed when you submit 
and shot when you rise. 

To shoot a rioter or lyncher is a high kind of mercy. Sup- 
pose that twenty-five years ago (the longer ago the better) two 
or three criminal mobs in succession had been exterminated in 
that way, "as the law provides." Suppose that several scores 
of lives had been so taken, including even those of "innocent 
spectators" — though that kind of angel does not abound in the 
vicinity of mobs. Suppose that no demagogue judges had per- 
mitted officers in command of the "firing lines" to be persecuted 
in the courts. Suppose that these events had writ themselves 
large and red in the public memory. How many lives would 
this have saved? Just as many as since have been taken and lost 
by rioters, plus those that for a long time to come will be taken, 
and minus those that were taken at that time. Make your own 
computation from your own data ; I insist only that a rioter shot 
in time saves nine. 

You know — ^you, the People — that all this is true. You 
know that in a Republic lawlessness is villainy entailing greater 
evils than it cures — that it cures none. You know that even 
the "money power" is powerful only through your own dis- 
honesty and cowardice. You know that nobody can bribe or 
intimidate a voter who will not take a bribe or suffer himself 
to be intimidated — that there can be no "money power" in a 
nation of honorable and courageous men. You know that 
"bosses" and "machines" can not control you if you will not 

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Industrial Discontent 



suffer then to divide you into "parties" by playing upon your 
credulity and senseless passions. You know all this, and know 
it all the time. Yet not a man has the courage to stand forth 
and say to your faces what you know in your hearts. Well, 
Messieurs the Masses, I don't consider you dangerous — not 
very. I have not observed that you want to tear anybody to 
pieces for confessing your sins, even if at the same time he con- 
fesses his own. From a considerable experience in that sort 
of thing I judge that you rather like it, and that he whom, 
secretly, you most despise is he who echoes back to you what he 
is pleased to think you think and flatters you for gain. Any- 
how, for some reason, I never hear you speak well of newspaper 
men and politicians, though in the shadow of your disesteem 
they get an occasional gleam of consolation by speaking fairly 
well of one another. 



Ill 



Crime and its 
Correctives 



Crime and its Correctives 




I. 

lOCIOLOGISTS have been debating the theory 
that the impulse to commit crime is a disease, 
and the ayes appear to have it — not the im- 
pulse but the decision. It is gratifying and pro- 
fitable to have the point settled: we now know "where we are 
at," and can take our course accordingly. It has for a number 
of years been known to all but a few back-number physicians 
— survivals from an exhausted regime — that all disease is 
caused by bacilli, which worm themselves into the organs that 
secrete health and enjoin them from the performance of that 
rite. The medical conservatives mentioned attempt to whittle 
away the value and significances of this theory by affirming its 
inadequacy to account for such disorders as broken heads, sun- 
stroke, superfluous toes, home-sickness, burns and strangulation 
on the gallows ; but against the testimony of so eminent bacteri- 
ologists as Drs. Koch and Pasteur their carping is as that of 
the idle angler. The bacillus is not to be denied; he has 
brought his blankets and is here to stay until evicted, and evic- 
tion can not be wrought by talking. Doubtless we may con- 
fidently expect his eventual suppression by a fresher and more 
ingenious disturber of the physiological peace, but the bacillus 
is now chief among ten thousand evils and it is futile to attempt 
to read him out of the party. 

It follows that in order to deal intelligently with the 
criminal impulse in our afflicted fellow-citizens we must dis- 

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The Shadorv on the Dial and other Essa})s 

cover the bacillus of crime. To that end I think that the bodies 
of hanged assassins and such persons of low degree as have been 
gathered to their fathers by the cares of public office or con- 
sumed by the rust of inactivity in prison should be handed 
over to the microscopists for examination. The bore, too, offers 
a fine field for research, and might justly enough be examined 
alive. Whether there is one general — or as the ancient and 
honorable orders prefer to say, "grand" — ^bacillus, producing 
a general (or grand) criminal impulse covering a multitude 
of sins, or an infinite number of well defined and several bacilli, 
each inciting to a particular crime, is a question to the determin- 
ation of which the most distinguished microscopist might be 
proud to devote the powers of his eye. If the latter is the 
case it will somewhat complicate the treatment, for clearly the 
patient afflicted with chronic robbery will require medicines 
different from those that might be efficacious in a gentleman 
suffering from constitutional theft or the desire to represent his 
District in the Assembly. But it is permitted to us to hope 
that all crimes, like all arts, are essentially one; that murder, 
arson and conservatism are but different symptoms of the same 
physical disorder, back of which is a microbe vincible to a single 
medicament, albeit the same awaits discovery. 

In the fascinating theory of the unity of crime we may not 
unreasonably hope to find another evidence of the brotherhood 
of man, another spiritual bond tending to draw the various 
classes of society more closely together. 

From time to time it is said that a "wave" of some kind of 
crime is sweeping the country. It is all nonsense about "waves** 
of crime. Occasionally occurs some crime notable for its 
unusual features, or for the renown of those concerned. It 
arrests public attention, which for a time is directed to that 

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Crime and its Correctives 



particular kind of crime, and the newspapers, with business- 
like instinct, give, for a season, unusual prominence to the 
record of similar offenses. Then, self-deceived, they talk about 
a "wave," or "epidemic" of it. So far is this from the truth 
that one of the most noticeable characteristics of crime is the 
steady and unbroken monotony of its occurrence in certain 
forms. There is nothing so dull and unvarying as this tedious 
uniformity of repetition. The march of crime is never re- 
tarded, never accelerated. The criminals appear to be 
thoroughly well satisfied with their annual average, as shown 
by the periodical reports of their secretary, the statistician. 

A marked illustration occurs to me. Many years ago in 
London a well-known and respectable gentleman was brutally 
garroted. It was during the "silly season" — between sessions 
of Parliament, when the newspapers are likely to be dull. 
They at once began to report cases of garroting. There 
appeared to be an "epidemic of garroting." The public mind 
was terribly excited, and when Parliament met it hastened to 
pass the infamous "flogging act" — a distinct reversion to the 
senseless and discredited methods of physical torture, so allur- 
ing to the half instructed mind of the average journalist of 
today. Yet the statistics published by the Home Secretary 
under whose administration the act was passed show that 
neither at the time of the alarm was there any material increase 
of garroting, nor in the period of public tranquillity succeeding 
was there any appreciable diminution. 

II. 

By advocating painless removal of incurable idiots and 
lunatics, incorrigible criminals and irreclaimable drunkards 
from this vale of tears Dr. W. Duncan McKim provoked many 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

a respectable but otherwise blameless person to throw a catfit 
of great complexity and power. Yet Dr. McKim seemed only 
to anticipate the trend of public opinion and forecast its crystal- 
lization into law. It is rapidly becoming a question of not what 
we ought to do with these unfortunates, but what we shall be 
compelled to do. Study of the statistics of the matter shows 
that in all civilized countries mental and moral diseases are in- 
creasing, proportionately to population, at a rate which in the 
course of a few generations will make it impossible for the 
healthy to care for the afflicted. To do so will require the 
entire revenue which it is possible to raise by taxation — will 
absorb all the profits of all the industries and professions and 
make deeper and deeper inroads upon the capital from which 
they are derived. When it comes to that there can be but one 
result. High and humanizing sentiments are angel visitants, 
whom we entertain with pride and pleasure, but when the 
entertainment becomes too costly to be borne we "speed the 
parting guest" forthwith. And it may happen that in inviting 
to his vacant place a less exciting successor — that in replacing 
Sentiment with Reason — we shall, in this instance, learn to our 
joy that we do but entertain another angel. For nothing is so 
heavenly as Reason; nothing is so sweet and compassionate as 
her voice — 

"Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose. 
But musical as is Apollo's lute." 

Is it cruel, is it heartless, is it barbarous to use something of 
the same care in breeding men and women as in breeding horses 
and dogs? Here is a determining question: Knowing yourself 
doomed to hopeless idiocy, lunacy, crime or drunkenness, would 
you, or would you not, welcome a painless death? Let us 

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Crime and its Correctives 



assume that you would. Upon what ground, then, would you 
deny to another a boon that you would desire for yourself? 

III. 

The good American is, as a rule, pretty hard upon roguery, 
but he atones for his austerity by an amiable toleration of 
rogues. His only requirement is that he must personally know 
the rogues. We all "denounce" thieves loudly enough, if we 
have not the honor of their acquaintance. If we have, why, 
that is different — ^unless they have the actual odor of the 
prison about them. We may know them guilty, but we meet 
them, shake hands with them, drink with them, and if they 
happen to be wealthy or otherwise great invite them to our 
houses, and deem it an honor to frequent theirs. We do not 
"approve their methods" — let that be understood; and thereby 
they are sufficiently punished. The notion that a knave cares a 
pin what is thought of his ways by one who is civil and 
friendly to himself appears to have been invented by a humorist. 
On the vaudeville stage of Mars it would probably have made 
his fortune. If warrants of arrest were out for every man in this 
country who is conscious of having repeatedly shaken hands 
with persons whom he knew to be knaves there would be no 
guiltless person to serve them. 

I know men standing high in journalism who today will 
"expose" and bitterly "denounce" a certain rascality and to- 
morrow will be hobnobbing with the rascals whom they have 
named. I know legislators of renown who habitually in "the 
halls of legislation" raise their voices against the dishonest 
schemes of some "trust magnate," and are habitually seen in 
familiar conversation with him. Indubitably these be hypo- 
crites all. Between the head and the heart of such a man is a 

119 



The ShadoTi> on the Dial and other Essays 

wall of adamant, and neither organ knows what the other is 
doing. 

If social recognition were denied to rogues they would be 
fewer by many. Some would only the more diligently cover 
their tracks along the devious paths of unrighteousness, but 
others would do so much violence to their consciences as to 
renounce the disadvantages of rascality for those of an honest 
life. An unworthy person dreads nothing so much as the with- 
holding of an honest hand, the slow inevitable stroke of an 
ignoring eye. 

For one having knowledge of Mr. John D. Rockefeller's 
social life and connections it would be easy to name a dozen 
men and women who by a conspiracy of conscription could 
profoundly affect the plans and profits of the Standard Oil 
Company. I have been asked: "If John D. Rockefeller were 
introduced to you by a friend, would you refuse to take his 
hand?" I certainly should — and if ever thereafter I took the 
hand of that hardy "friend" it would be after his repentance 
and promise to reform his ways. We have Rockefellers and 
Morgans because we have "respectable" persons who are not 
ashamed to take them by the hand, to be seen with them, to say 
that they know them. In such it is treachery to censure them; 
to cry out when robbed by them is to turn State's evidence. 

One may smile upon a rascal (most of us do so many times 
a day) if one does not know him to be a rascal, and has not 
said he is ; but knowing him to be, or having said he is, to smile 
upon him is to be a hypocrite — just a plain hypocrite or a 
sycophantic hypocrite, according to the station in life of the 
rascal smiled upon. There are more plain hypocrites than 
sycophantic ones, for there are more rascals of no consequence 
than rich and distinguished ones, though they get fewer smiles 

12Q 



Crime and its Correctives 



each. The American people will be plundered as long as the 
American character is what it is; as long as it is tolerant of 
successful knavery; as long as American ingenuity draws an 
imaginary distinction between a man's public character and his 
private — his commercial and his personal. In brief, the 
American people will be plundered as long as they deserve 
to be plundered. No human law can stop it, none ought to 
stop it, for that would abrogate a higher and more salutary 
law: "As ye sow ye shall reap." 

In a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst is the following: 
"The story of all our Lord's dealings with sinners leaves 
upon the mind the invariable impression, if only the story be 
read sympathetically and earnestly, that He always felt kindly 
towards the transgressor, but could have no tenderness of 
regard toward the transgression. There is no safe and success- 
ful dealing with sin of any kind save as that distinction is 
appreciated and made a continual factor in our feelings and 
efforts." 

With all due respect for Dr. Parkhurst, that is nonsense. 
If he will read his New Testament more understandingly he 
will observe that Christ's kindly feeling to transgressors was not 
to be counted on by sinners of every kind, and it was not always 
in evidence ; for example, when he flogged the money-changers 
out of the temple. Nor is Dr. Parkhurst himself any too 
amiably disposed toward the children of darkness. It is not 
by mild words and gentle means that he has hurled the mighty 
from their seats and exalted them of low degree. Such 
revolutions as he set afoot are not made with spiritual rose- 
water ; there must be the contagion of a noble indignation fueled 
with harder wood than abstractions. The people can not be 
collected and incited to take sides by the spectacle of a 

121 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essa'^s 

man fighting something that does not fight back. It is men that 
Dr. Parkhurst is trouncing — not their crimes — not Crime. He 
may fancy himself "dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn 
of scorn," but in reaHty he does not hate hate but hates the 
hateful, and scorns, not scorn, but the scornworthy. 

It is singular with what tenacity that amusing though 
mischievous superstition keeps its hold upon the human mind — 
that grave bona fide personification of abstractions and the 
funny delusion that it is possible to hate or love them. Sin 
is not a thing; there is no existing object corresponding to any 
of the mere counter-words that are properly named abstract 
nouns. One can no more hate sin or love virtue than one can 
hate a vacuum (which Nature — itself imaginary — was once 
by the scientists of the period solemnly held to do) or love one 
of the three dimensions. We may think that while loving a 
sinner we hate the sin, but that is not so ; if anything is hated it 
is other sinners of the same kind, who are not quite so close to 
us. 

"But," says Citizen Goodheart, who thinks with difficulty, 
"shall I throw over my friend when he is in trouble?" Yes, 
when you are convinced that he deserves to be in trouble ; throw 
him all the harder and the further because he is your friend. 
In addition to his particular offense against society he has dis- 
graced ^ou. If there are to be lenity and charity let them go 
to the criminal who has foreborne to involve you in his shame. 
It were a pretty state of affairs if an undetected scamp, fearing 
exposure, could make you a co-defendant by so easy a precau- 
tion as securing your acquaintance and regard. Don't throw 
the first stone, of course, but when convinced that your friend 
is a proper target, heave away with a right hearty good-will, 

122 



Crime and its Correctives 



and let the stone be of serviceable dimensions, scabrous, 
textured flintwise and delivered with a good aim. 

The French have a saying to the effect that to know all is 
to pardon all ; and doubtless with an omniscient insight into the 
causes of character we should find the field of moral respon- 
sibility pretty thickly strewn with extenuating circumstances 
very suitable indeed for consideration by a god who has had a 
hand in besetting "with pitfall and with gin" the road we are to 
wander in. But I submit that universal forgiveness would 
hardly do as a working principle. Even those who are most 
apt and facile with the incident of the woman taken in adultery 
commonly cherish a secret respect for the doctrine of eternal 
damnation ; and some of them are known to pin their faith to the 
penal code of their state. Moreover there is some reason to 
believe that the sinning woman, being "taken," was penitent — 
they usually are when found out. 

I care nothing about principles — they are lumber and 
rubbish. What concerns our happiness and welfare, as affect- 
ible by our fellowmen, is conduct. "Principles, not men," is a 
rogue's cry; rascality's counsel to stupidity, the noise of the 
duper duping on his dupe. He shouts it most loudly and with 
the keenest sense of its advantage who most desires inattention 
to his own conduct, or to that forecast of it, his character. As 
to sin, that has an abundance of expounders and is already 
universally known to be wicked. What more can be said 
against it, and why go on repeating that? The thing is a trifle 
wordworn, whereas the sinner cometh up as a flower every day, 
fresh, ingenious and inviting. Sin is not at all dangerous to 
society; it is the sinner that does all the mischief. Sin has no 
arms to thrust into the public treasury and the private; no 
hands with which to cut a throat ; no tongue to wreck a reputa- 

123 



The Shadotv on the Dial and other Essays 

tion withal. I would no more attack it than I would attack an 
isosceles triangle, a vacuum, or Hume*s "phantasm floating in 
a void." My chosen enemy must be something that has a skin 
for my switch, a head for my cudgel — something that can 
smart and ache and, if so minded, fight back. I have no 
quarrel with abstractions; so far as I know they are all good 
citizens. 



124 



The Death 
Penalty 



The Death Penalty 



I. 



■ 



OWN with the gallows!" is a cry not un- 
familiar in America. There is always a move- 
ment afoot to make odious the just principle 
of "a life for a life" — to represent it as "a 
relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of the divine authority," 
and the rotten rest of it. The law making murder punishable by 
death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the display of 
a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without provoca- 
tion. Even the most brainless opponent of "capital punish- 
ment" would do that if he knew enough. It is in precisely the 
same sense an admonition, a warning to abstain from crime. 
Society says by that law: "If you kill one of us you die," just as 
by display of the pistol the individual whose life is attacked 
says: "Desist or be shot." To be effective the warning in either 
case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly 
reasoner among the gallows-downing unfortunates would 
hardly expect to frighten away an assassin who knew the pistol 
to be unloaded. Of course these queer illogicians can not be 
made to understand that their position commits them to absolute 
non-resistance to any kind of aggression, and that is fortunate 
for the rest of us, for if as Christians they frankly and con- 
sistently took that ground we should be under the miserable 
necessity of respecting them. 

We have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence 

127 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essay^s 

of murder in this country is due to the fact that we do not 
execute our laws — that the death penalty is threatened but not 
inflicted — that the pistol is not loaded. In civilized countries, 
where there is enough respect for the laws to administer them, 
there is enough to obey them. While man still has as much of 
the ancestral brute as his skin can hold without cracking we 
shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists and assassins 
and persons with a private system of lexicography who define 
hanging as murder and murder as mischance, and many 
cmother disagreeable creation, but in all this welter of crime and 
stupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure 
against the human hand. It is at least a significant coincidence 
that in these the death penalty for murder is fairly well enforced 
by judges who do not derive any part of their authority from 
those for whose restraint and punishment they hold it. Against 
the life of one guiltless person the lives of ten thousand murderers 
count for nothing; their hanging is a public good, without 
reference to the crimes that disclose their deserts. If we could 
discover them by other signs than their bloody deeds they 
should be hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a 
death as evidence. The scientists who will tell us how to recog- 
nize the potential assassin, and persuade us to kill him, will 
be the greatest benefactor of his century. 

What would these enemies of the gibbet have? — these 
lineal descendants of the drunken mobs that pelted the hangmen 
at Tyburn Tree; this progeny of criminals, which has so de- 
filed with the mud of its animosity the noble office of public 
executioner that even "in this enlightened age'* he shirks his 
high duty, entrusting it to a hidden or unnamed subordinate? 
If murder is unjust of what importance is it whether it's- 
punishment by death be just or not? — nobody needs to incur it. 

128 



The Death Penalty^ 



Men are not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. 
"Then it is not deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude 
forefather pelted the hangman. Well, as to that, the law 
which is to accomplish more than a part of its purpose must be 
awaited with great patience. Every murder proves that hang- 
ing is not altogether deterrent; every hanging that it is some- 
what deterrent — it deters the person hanged. A man*s first 
murder is his crime, his second is ours. 

The voice of Theosophy has been heard in favor of down- 
ing the gallows. As usual the voice is a trifle vague and it 
babbles. Clear speech is the outcome of clear thought, and 
that is something to which Theosophists are not addicted. Con- 
sidering their infirmity in that way, it would be hardly fair to 
take them as seriously as they take themselves, but when any 
considerable number of apparently earnest citizens unite in a 
petition to the Governor of their State, to commute the death 
sentence of a convicted assassin without alleging a doubt of his 
guilt the phenomenon challenges a certain attention to what they 
do allege. What these amiable persons hold, it seems, is what was 
held by Alphonse Karr: the expediency of abolishing the death 
penalty; but apparently they do not hold, with him, that the 
assassins should begin. They want the State to begin, believing 
that the magnanimous example will effect a change of heart in 
those about to murder. This, I take it, is the meaning of their 
assertion that "death penalties have not the deterring influence 
which imprisonment for life carries." In this they obviously 
err : death deters at least the person who suffers it — he commits 
no more murder; whereas the assassin who is imprisoned for 
life and immune from further punishment may with impunity 
kill his keeper or whomsoever he may be able to get at. Even as 
matters now are, the most incessant vigilance is required to pre- 

129 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

vent convicts in prison from murdering their attendants and one 
another. How would it be if the "Hfe-termer" were assured 
against any additional inconvenience for braining a guard 
occasionally, or strangling a chaplain now and then? A 
penitentiary may be described as a place of punishment and 
reward; and under the system proposed the difference in de- 
sirableness between a sentence and an appointment would be 
virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life sentence 
would have to mean solitary confinement, and that means in- 
sanity. Is that what these Theosophical gentlemen propose to 
substitute for death? 

These petitioners call the death penalty "a relic of bar- 
barism," which is neither conclusive nor true. What is required 
is not loose assertion and dogs-eared phrases, but evidence 
of futility, or, in lack of that, cogent reasoning. It is true that 
the most barbarous nations inflict the death penalty most 
frequently and for the greatest number of offenses, but that is 
because barbarians are more criminal in instinct and less easily 
controlled by gentle methods than civilized peoples. Hiat is 
why we call them barbarous. It is not so very long since our 
English ancestors punished more than forty kinds of crime with 
death. The fact that the hangman, the boiler-in-oil and the 
breaker-on-the-wheel had their hands full does not show that the 
laws were futile ; it shows that the dear old boys from whom we 
are proud to derive ourselves were a bad lot — of which we 
have abundant corroborative evidence in their brutal pastimes 
and in their manners and customs generally. To have restrained 
that crowd by the rose-water methods of modern penology — 
that is unthinkable. 

The death penalty, say the memorialists, "creates blood- 
thirstiness in the unthinking masses and defeats its own ends. It 

130 



The Death Penalt]f 



is a cause of murder, not a check.** These gentlemen are them- 
selves of "the unthinking masses" — they do not know how to 
think. Let them try to trace and lucidly expound the chain of 
motives lying between the knowledge that a murderer has been 
hanged and the wish to commit a murder. How, precisely, does 
the one beget the other? By what unearthly process of reason- 
ing does a man turning away from the gallows persuade him- 
self that it is expedient to incur the danger of hanging? Let 
MS have pointed out to us the several steps in that remarkable 
mental progress. Obviously, the thing is absurd; one might as 
reasonably say that contemplation of a pitted face will make a 
man go and catch smallpox, or the spectacle of an amputated 
limb on the scrap-heap of a hospital tempt him to cut off his 
arm. 

*'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,** says the 
Theosophist, "is not justice. It is revenge and unworthy of a 
Christian civilization.*' It is exact justice: nobody can think 
of anything more accurately just than such punishments would 
be, whatever the motive in awarding them. Unfortunately such 
a system is not practicable, but he who denies its absolute 
justice must deny also the justice of a bushel of com for a bushel 
of com, a dollar for a dollar, service for service. We can not 
undertake by such clumsy means as laws and courts to do to 
the criminal exactly what he has done to his victim, but to 
demand a life for a life is simple, practicable, expedient and 
(therefore) right. 

Here are two of these gentlemen's dicta, between which 
they inserted the one just considered, though properly they 
should go together in frank inconsistency : 

"6. It [the death penalty] punishes the innocent a 
thousand times more than the guilty. Death is merciful to 

131 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essa})s 

the tortures which the Hving relatives must undergo. And they 
have committed no crime.'* 

"8. Death penahies have not the deterring influence 
which imprisonment for Hfe carries. Mere death is not dreaded. 
See the number of suicides. Hopeless captivity is much more 
severe.'* 

Merely noting that the "living relatives'* whose sorrows 
so sympathetically affect these soft-hearted and soft-headed 
persons are those of the murderer, not those of his victim, let 
us consider what they really say, not what they think they say : 
"Death is no very great punishment, for the criminal doesn't 
mind it much, but hopeless captivity is a very great punishment 
indeed. Therefore, let us spare the assassin's family the tortures 
they will suffer if we inflict the lighter penalty. Let us make 
it easier for them by inflicting the severer one." 

There is sense for you! — sense of the sound old fruity 
Theosophical sort — the kind of sense that has lifted "The 
Beautiful Cult" out of the dark domain of reason into the 
serene altitudes of inexpressible Thrill! 

As to "hopeless captivity," though, there is no such thing. 
In legislation, today can not bind tomorrow. By an act of 
the Legislature — even by a constitutional prohibition, we may 
do away with the pardoning power ; but laws can be repealed, 
constitutions amended. 

The public has a short memory, signatures to petitions in 
the line of mercy are had for the asking, and tender-hearted 
Governors are familiar afflictions. We have life sentences 
already, and sometimes they are served to the end — ^if the 
end comes soon enough! but the average length of "life im- 
prisonment" is, I am told, a little more than seven years. Hope 
springs eternal in the human beast, and matters simply can not 

132 



The Death Penalty 



be so arranged that in entering the penitentiary he will "leave 
hope behind." Hopeless captivity is a dream. 

I quote again: 

"9. Life imprisonment is the natural and humane check 
upon one v^ho has proven his unfitness for freedom by taking 
life deliberately." 

What! it is no longer "much more severe" than the "relic 
of barbarism?" In the course of a half dozen lines of petition it 
has become "humane"? Truly these are lightning changes of 
character! It would be pleasing to know just what these 
worthy Theosophers have the happiness to think that they 
think. 

"It is the only punishment that receives the consent of 
conscience." 

That is to say, their conscience and that of the convicted 
assassin. 

"Taking the life of a murderer does not restore the life he 
took therefore, it is a most illogical punishment. Two wrongs 
do not make a right." 

Here's richness! Hanging an assassin is illogical because 
it does not restore the life of his victim; incarceration does; 
therefore, incarceration is logical — quod erat demonstrandum. 

Two wrongs certainly do not make a right, but the verit- 
able thing in dispute is whether taking the life of a life-taker 
is a wrong. So naked and unashamed an example of petiiio 
principii would disgrace a debater in a pinafore. And these 
wonder-mongers have the incredible effrontery to babble of 
"logic"! Why, if one of them were to meet a syllogism in a 
lonely road he would run away in a hundred and fifty direc- 
tions as hard as ever he could hook it. One is almost ashamed 
to dispute with such intellectual cloutlings. 

133 



The ShadoTv on the Dial and other Essays 



Whatever an individual may rightly do to protect himself 
society may rightly do to protect him, for he is a part of itself. 
If he may rightly take life in defending himself society may 
rightly take life in defending him. If society may rightly take 
life in defending him it may rightly threaten to take it. Having 
rightly and mercifully threatened to take it, it not only rightly 
may take it, but expediently must. 

The law of a life for a life does not altogether prevent 
murder. No law can altogether prevent any form of crime, nor 
is it desirable that it should. Doubtless God could so have 
created us that our sense of right and justice could have existed 
without contemplation of injustice and wrong, as doubtless {Ijie 
could so have created us that we could have felt compassion 
without a knowledge of suffering, but doubtless Jje did not. Con- 
stituted as we are, we can know good only by contrast with evil. 
Our sense of sin is what our virtues feed upon ; in the thin air of 
universal morality the altar-fires of honor and the beacons of 
conscience could not be kept alight. A community without 
crime would be a community without warm and elevated senti- 
ments — without the sense of justice, without generosity, without 
courage, without magnanimity — a community of small, smug 
souls, uninteresting to God and uncoveted by the Devil. We 
can have too much of crime, no doubt ; what the wholesome pro- 
portion is none can say. Just now we are running a good deal 
to murder, but he who can gravely attribute that phenomenon, 
or any part of it, to infliction of the death penalty, instead of 
virtual immunity from any penalty at all, is justly entitled to 
the innocent satisfaction that comes of being a simpleton. 

The New Woman is against the death penalty, naturally, 
for she is hot and hardy in the conviction that whatever is is 
wrong. She has visited this world in order to straighten things 

134 



The Death Penalt}) 



about a bit, and is in distress lest the number of things be 
insufficient to her need. The matter is important variously ; not 
least so in its relation to the new heaven and the new earth 
that are to be the outcome of woman suffrage. There can be no 
doubt that the vast majority of women have sentimental objec- 
tions to the death penalty that quite outweigh such practical 
considerations in its favor as they can be persuaded to compre- 
hend. Aided by the minority of men afflicted by the same men- 
tal malady, they will indubitably effect its abolition in the first 
lustrum of their political activity. The New Woman will 
scarcely feel the seat of power warm beneath her before giving 
to the assassin's "unhand me villain!" the authority of law. So 
we shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a 
thousand failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught 
criminals. And the criminal uncaught will treat us to a quahty 
of toughness notably augmented by the Christian spirit of the 
regime. 

II. 

As to painless executions, the simple and practical way to 
make them both just and popular is the adoption by murderers 
of a system of painless assassinations. Until this is done there 
seems to be no hope that the people will renounce the whole- 
some discomfort of the style of executions endeared to them by 
memories and associations of the tenderest character. There 
is also, I fancy, a shaping notion in the public mind that 
the penologists and their allies have gone about as far as they 
can safely be permitted to go in the direction of a softer suasion 
of the criminal nature toward good behavior. The modem 
prison has become a rather more comfortable habitation than the 
dangerous classes are accustomed to at home. Modem prison 

135 



The Shadon> on the Dial and other Essays 

life has in their eyes something of the charm and glamor of an 
ideal existence, like that in the Happy Valley from which 
Rasselas had the folly to escape. Whatever advantages to 
the public may be secured by abating the rigors of imprisonment 
and inconveniences incident to execution, there is this objection, 
it makes them less deterrent. Let the penologers and philan- 
thropers have their way and even hanging might be made so 
pleasant and withal so interesting a social distinction that it 
would deter nobody but the person hanged. Adopt the eutha- 
nasian method of electricity, asphyxia by smothering in rose- 
leaves, or slow poisoning with rich food, and the death penalty 
may come to be regarded as the object of a noble ambition to 
the hon vivanf, and the rising young suicide may go and murder 
somebody else instead of himself in order to receive a happier 
dispatch than his own 'prentice hand can assure him. 

But the advocates of agreeable pains and penalties tell us 
that in the darker ages, when cruel and degrading punish- 
ment was the rule, and was freely inflicted for every light in- 
fraction of the law, crime was more common than it is now; 
and in this they appear to be right. But they one and all over- 
look a fact equally obvious and vastly significant: that the in- 
tellectual, moral and social condition of the masses was very 
low. Crime was more common because ignorance was more 
common, poverty was more common, sins of authority, 2Uid 
therefore hatred of authority, were more common. The world 
of even a century ago was a quite different world from the 
world of today, and a vastly more uncomfortable one. The 
popular adage to the contrary notwithstanding, human nature 
was not by a long cut the same then that it is now. In the 
very ancient time of that early English king, George III, when 
women were burned at the stake in public for various offenses 

136 



The Death Penalty 



and men were hanged for "coining" and children for theft, and 
in the still remoter period, (circa 1530) when poisoners were 
boiled in several waters, divers sorts of criminals were disem- 
boweled and some are thought to have undergone the peine forte 
et dure of cold-pressing (an infliction which the pen of Hugo 
has since made popular — in literature) — in these wicked old 
days it is possible that crime flourished, not because of the law's 
severity, but in spite of it. It is possible that our respected and 
respectable ancestors understood the situation as it then was a 
trifle better than we can understand it on the hither side of this 
gulf of years, and that they were not the reasonless barbarians 
that we think them to have been. And if they were, what 
must have been the unreason and barbarity of the criminal 
element with which they had to deal? 

I am far from thinking that severity of punishment can have 
the same restraining effect as probability of some punishment 
being inflicted ; but if mildness of penalty is to be superadded to 
difficulty of conviction, and both are to be mounted upon laxity 
in detection, the "pile" will be "complete" with a vengeance. 
There is a peculiar fitness, perhaps, in the fact that all these 
pleas for comfortable punishment should be urged at a time 
when there appears to be a tolerably general disposition to in- 
flict no punishment at all. There are, however, still a few old- 
fashioned persons who hold it obvious that one who is ambitious 
to break the laws of his country will not with as light a heart 
and as airy an indifference incur the peril of a harsh penalty 
as he will the chance of one more nearly resembling that which 
he would select for himself. 



137 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essa})s 



III. 

After lying for more than a century dead I was revived, 
given a new body, cind restored to society. This was in the year 
2015. The first thing of interest that I observed was an enor- 
mous building, covering a square mile of ground. It was sur- 
rounded on all sides by a high, strong wall of hewn stone upon 
which armed sentinels paced to and fro. In one face of the 
wall was a single gate of massive iron, strongly guarded. While 
admiring the cyclopesin architecture of the "reverend pile" I 
was accosted by a man in uniform, evidently The Warden, with 
a cheerful salutation. 

"Colonel," I said, pressing his hand, "it gives me pleasure 
to find some one that I can believe. Pray tell me what is this 
building." 

"That," said the colonel, "is the new State penitentiary. 
It is one of twelve, all alike." 

"You surprise me," I replied. "Surely the criminal element 
must have increased enormously." 

"Yes, indeed," he assented; "under the Reform regime, 
which began in your day, it beceune so powerful, bold eind fierce 
that arrests were no longer possible and the prisons then in ex- 
istence were soon overcrowded. The State was compelled to 
erect others of greater capacity." 

"But, Colonel," I protested, "if the criminals were too bold 
and powerful to be taken into custody, of what use are the 
prisons? And how are they crowded?" 

He fixed upon me a look that I could not fail to interpret 
as expressing a doubt of my sanity. "What?" he said, "is it 
possible that the modem Penology is unknown to you? Do 
you suppose we practise the smtiquated and ineffective method 

138 



The Death Penalty 



of shutting up the rascals? Sir, the growth of the criminal 
element has, as I said, compelled the erection of more and larger 
prisons. We have enough to hold comfortably all the honest 
men and women of the State. Within these protecting walls 
they carry on all the necessary vocations of life excepting com- 
merce. That is necessarily in the hands of the rogues as 
before." 

"Venerated representative of Reform,** I exclaimed, wring- 
ing his hand with effusion, "you are Knowledge, you are His- 
tory, you are the Higher Education! We must talk further. 
Come, let us enter this benign edifice; you shall show me your 
dominion and instruct me in the rules. You shall propose me 
as an inmate.** 

I walked rapidly to the gate. When challenged by the 
sentinel, I turned to summon my instructor. He was nowhere 
visible: desolate and forbidding, as about the broken statue 
of Ozymandias, 

"The lone and level sands stretched far away.** 



139 



Religion 



Religion 



L 




HIS is my ultimate and determining test of right — 
"What, in the circumstances, would Christ have 
done?" — the Christ of the New Testament, not 
the Christ of the commentators, theologians, 
priests and parsons. The test is perhaps not infallible, but it 
is exceedingly simple and gives as good practical results as any. 
I am not a Christian, but so far as I know, the best and truest 
and sweetest character in literature, is next to Buddha, Jesus 
Christ. He taught nothing new in goodness, for all goodness 
was ages old before he came; but with an almost infallible 
intuition he applied to life and conduct the entire law of 
righteousness. He was a lightning moral calculator: to his 
luminous intelligence the statement of the problem carried the 
solution — he could not hesitate, he seldom erred. That upon 
his deeds and words was founded a religion which in a de- 
based form persists and even spreads to this day is mere attesta- 
tion of his marvelous gift: adoration is a primitive mode of 
recognition. 

It seems a pity that this wonderful man had not a longer 
life under more complex conditions — conditions more nearly 
identical with those of the modern world and the future. One 
would like to be able to see, through the eyes of his biographers, 
his genius applied to more and more difficult questions. Yet 
one can hardly go wrong in inference of his thought and act. 
In many of the complexities and entanglements of modern 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essay^s 

affairs it is no easy matter to find an answer off-hand to the 
question, "What is it right to do?" But put it in another 
way: "What would Christ have done?" and lol there is Hght! 
Doubt spreads her bat-Hke wings and is away ; the sun of truth 
springs into the sky, splendoring the path of right and marking 
that of error with a deeper shade. 

II. 

Gentlemen of the secular press dealt with the Rev. Mr. 
Sheldon not altogether fairly. To some very relevant consider- 
ations they gave no weight. It was not fair, for example, to say, 
as the distinguished editor of the "North American Review" 
did, that in professing to conduct a daily newspaper for a week 
as he conceived that Christ would have conducted it, Mr. 
Sheldon acted the part of "a notoriety seeking mountebank." 
It seldom is fair to go into the question of motive, for that is 
something upon which one has the least light, even when the 
motive is one's own. The motives that we think dominate us 
seem simple and obvious; they are in most instances exceed- 
ingly complex and obscure. Complacently surveying the 
wreck and ruin that he has wrought, even that great anarch, 
the "well meaning person," can not have entire assurance that 
he meant as well as the disastrous results appear to him to show. 

The trouble with Mr. Harvey of the "Review" was in- 
ability to put himself in another's place if that happened to be 
at any considerable distance from his own place. He made no 
allowance for the difference in the point of view — for the 
difference, that is, between his mind and the mind of Mr. 
Sheldon. If Mr. Harvey had undertaken to conduct that 
Kansas newspaper as Christ would have done he would indeed 

144 



Religion 

have been "a notoriety seeking mountebank," or some similarly 
unenviable thing, for only a selfish purpose could persuade him 
to an obviously resultless work. But Mr. Sheldon w^as dif- 
ferent — his was the religious mind — a mind having faith in 
an "overruling" Providence who can, and frequently does, 
interfere with the orderly relation of cause and effect, accom- 
plishing an end by means otherwise inadequate to its produc- 
tion. Believing himself a faithful servant of that Power, and 
asking daily for its interposition for promotion of a highly 
moral purpose, why should he not have expected his favor to 
the enterprise? To expect that was, in Mr. Sheldon, natural, 
reasonable, wise ; his folly lay in believing in conditions making 
it expectable. A person convinced that the law of gravitation 
is suspended is no fool for walking into a bog. Mr. Harvey 
may understand, but Mr. Sheldon can not understand, that 
Jesus Christ would not edit a newspaper at all. 

TTie religious mind, it should be understood, is not logical. 
It may acquire, as Whateley's did, a certain familiarity with 
the syllogism as an abstraction, but of the syllogism's practical 
application, its real relation to the phenomena of thought, the 
religious mind can know nothing. That is merely to say that 
the mind congenitally gifted with the power of logic and 
accessible to its light and leading does not take to religion, 
which is a matter, not of reason, but of feeling — not of the 
head, but of the heart. Religions are conclusions for which 
the facts of nature supply no major premises. They are accepted 
or rejected according to the original mental make-up of the per- 
son to whom they appeal for recognition. Believers and un- 
believers are like two boys quarreling across a wall. Each got 
to his place by means of a ladder. They may fight if they will, 
but neither can kick away the other's support. 

145 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

Believing the things that he did beheve, Mr. Sheldon was 
entirely right in thinking that the main purpose of a news- 
paper should be the salvation of souls. If his religious belief is 
true that should be the main purpose, not only of a news- 
paper, but of everything that has a purpose, or can be given 
one. If we have immortal souls and the consequences of our 
deeds in the body reach over into another life in another world, 
determining there our eternal state of happiness or pain, that 
is the most momentous fact conceivable. It is the only momen- 
tous fact; all others are chaff and rags. A man who, believ- 
ing it to be a fact, does not make it the one purpose of his 
life to save his soul and the souls of others that are willing to be 
saved is a fool and a rogue. If he think that any part of this 
only needful work can be done by turning a newspaper into 
a gruelpot he ought to do so or (preferably) perish in the 
attempt. 

The talk of degrading the sacred name, and all that, is 
mostly nonsense. If one may not test his conduct in this Hfe by 
reference to the highest standard that his religion affords it 
is not easy to see how religion is to be made anything but a 
mere body of doctrine. I do not think the Christian religion 
will ever be seriously discredited by an attempt to determine, 
even with too dim a light, what, under given circumstances, the 
man miscalled its "founder" would do. What else is his 
great example good for? But it is not always enough to ask 
oneself, "How would Christ do this?'* One should first con- 
sider whether Christ would do it. It is conceivable that certain 
of his thrifty contemporaries may have asked him how he 
would change money in the Temple. 

If Mr. Sheldon's critics were unfair his defenders were, as 
a rule, not much better. They meant to be fair, but they had 

146 



Religi 



on 



to be foolish. For example, there is the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, 
whose defence was published with Mr. Harvey's attack. I 
shall give a single illustration of how this more celebrated than 
cerebrated "divine" is pleased to think that he thinks. He is 
replying to some one's application to this matter of Christ's 
injunction, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth." 
This command, he gravely says, "is not against money, nor 
against the making of money, but against the loving it for its 
own sake and the dedicating of it to self-aggrandizing uses." 
I call this a foolish utterance, because it violates the good old 
rule of not telling an obvious falsehood. In no word nor syl- 
lable does Christ's injunction give the least color of truth to 
the reverend gentleman's "interpretation;" that is the reverend 
gentleman's very own, and doubtless he feels an honest pride 
in it. It is the product of a controversial need — a character- 
istic attempt to crawl out of a hole in an enclosure which he was 
not invited to enter. The words need no "interpretation;" are 
capable of none; are as clear and unambiguous a proposition 
as language can frame. Moreover, they are consistent with all 
that we think we know of their author's life and character, for 
he not only lived in poverty and taught poverty as a blessing, 
but commanded it as a duty and a means of salvation. The 
probable effect of universal obedience among those who adore 
him as a god is not at present an urgent question. I think even 
so faithful a disciple as the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst has still a 
place to lay his head, a little of the wherewithal to be clothed, 
and a good deal of the power of interpretation to excuse it. 



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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

III. 

There are other hypocrites than those of the pulpit. Dr. 
Gathng, the ingenious scoundrel who invented the gun that 
bears his name with commendable fortitude, says he has given 
much thought to the task of bringing the forces of war to such 
perfection that war will be no more. Commonly the man who 
talks of war becoming so destructive as to be impossible is only 
a harmless lunatic, but this fellow utters his cant to conceal 
his cupidity. If he thought there was any danger of the 
nations beating their swords into plowshares we should see 
him "take the stump" against agriculture forthwith. The same 
is true of all military inventors. They are lions* parasites; 
themselves, of cold blood they fatten upon hot. The sheep- 
tick's paler fare is not at all to their taste. 

I sometimes wish I were a preacher: preachers do so 
blindly ignore their shining opportunities. I am indifferently 
versed in theology — whereof, so help me Heaven, I do not 
believe one word — but know something of religion. I know, 
for example, that Jesus Christ was no soldier; that war has 
two essential features which did not command His approval: 
aggression and defence. No man can either attack or defend 
and remain Christian; and if no man, no nation. I could 
quote texts by the hour proving that Christ taught not only 
absolute abstention from violence but absolute non-resistance. 
Now what do we see? Nearly all the so-called Christian 
nations of the world sweating and groaning under their burdens 
of debt contracted in violation of these injunctions which they 
believe divine — contracted in perfecting their means of offense 
and defense. "We must have the best," they cry; and if armor 
plates for ships were better when alloyed with silver, and guns 

148 



Religi 



on 



if banded with gold, such armor plates would be put upon the 
ships, such guns would be freely made. No sooner does one 
nation adopt some rascal's costly device for taking life or pro- 
tecting it from the taker (and these soulless inventors will as 
readily sell the product of their malign ingenuity to one nation 
as to another) than all the rest either possess themselves of it 
or adopt something superior and more expensive; and so all 
pay the penalty for the sins of each. A hundred million 
dollars is a moderate estimate of what it has cost the world to 
abstain from strangling the infant Gatling in his cradle. 

You may say, if you will, that primitive Christianity — the 
Christianity of Christ — is not adapted to these rough-and- 
tumble times; that it is not a practical scheme of conduct. As 
you please; I have not undertaken to say what it is not, but 
what it partly is. I am no Christian, though I think that Christ 
probably knew what was good for man about as well as 
Dr. Gatling or the United States Ordnance Office. It is not 
for me to defend Christianity; Christ did not. Nevertheless, 
I can not forbear the wish that I were a preacher, in order 
sincerely to affirm that the awful burdens borne by modern 
nations are obvious judgments of Heaven for disobedience to 
the Prince of Peace. What a striking theme to kindle fires 
upon the heights of imagination — to fill the secret sources of 
eloquence — to stir the very stones in the temple of truth ! What 
a noble subject for the pious gentlemen who serve (with rank, 
pay and allowances) as chaplains in the Army and the Navy, 
or the civilian divines who offer prayer at the launching of an 
ironclad ! 



149 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

IV. 

A matter of missionaries commonly is to the fore as a cause 
of quarrel among nations which have the hardihood to prefer 
their own religions to ours. Missionaries constitute, in truth, 
a perpetual menace to the national peace. I dare say the most 
of them are conscientious men and women of a certain order 
of intellect. They believe, and from the way that they inter- 
pret their sacred book have some reason to believe, that in 
meddling uninvited with the spiritual affairs of others they per- 
form a work acceptable to God — their God. They think they 
discern a moral difference between "approaching" a man of 
another religion about the state of his soul and approaching 
him on the condition of his linen or the character of his wife. 
I think there is no difference. I have observed that the person 
who volunteers an interest in my spiritual welfare is the same 
person from whom I must expect an impudent concern about 
my temporal affairs. The missionary is one who goes about 
throwing open the shutters of other men's bosoms in order to 
project upon the blank walls a shadow of himself. 

No ruler nor government of sense would willingly permit 
foreigners to sap the foundation of the national religion. No 
ruler nor government ever does permit it except under the stress 
of compulsion. It is through the people's religion that a wise 
government governs wisely — even in our own country we make 
only a transparent pretense of officially ignoring Christianity, 
and a pretense only because we have so many kinds of Chris- 
tians, all jealous and inharmonious. Each sect would make 
this a Theocracy if it could, and would then make short work 
of any missionary from abroad. Happily all religions but ours 
have the sloth and timidity of error; Christianity alone, draw- 

150 



Religion 

ing vigor from eternal truth, is courageous enough and ener- 
getic enough to make itself a nuisance to people of every other 
faith. The Jew not only does not bid for converts, but dis- 
courages them by imposition of hard conditions, and the 
Moslem True Believer's simple, forthright method of reducing 
error is to cut off the head holding it. I don't say that this 
is right; I say only that, being practical and comprehensible, 
it commands a certain respect from the impartial observer not 
conversant with scriptural justification of the other practice. 

It is only where the missionaries have made themselves 
hated that there is any molestation of Europeans engaged in the 
affairs of this world. Chinese antipathy to Caucasians in China 
is neither a racial animosity nor a religious; it is an instinctive 
dislike of persons who will not mind their own business. 
China has been infested with missionaries from the earliest 
centuries of our era, and they have rarely been molested when 
they have taken the trouble to behave themselves. In the time 
of the Emperor Justinian the fact that the Christian religion was 
openly preached throughout China enabled that sovereign to 
wrest from the Chinese the jealously-guarded secret of silk- 
making. He sent two monks to Pekin, who alternately 
preached seriousness and studied sericulture, and who brought 
away silkworms' eggs concealed in sticks. 

In religious matters the Chinese are more tolerant than we. 
They let the religions of others alone, but naturally and 
rightly demand that others shall let theirs alone. In China, as 
in other Oriental countries where the color line is not drawn and 
where slavery itself is a light affliction, the mental attitude of 
the zealot who finds gratification in "spreading the light" of 
which he deems himself custodian, is not understood. Like 

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The ShadoJv on the Dial and other Essay^s 

most things not understood, it is felt to be bad, and is indubit- 
ably offensive. 

V. 

At a church club meeting a paper was read by a minister 
entitled, "Why the Masses Do not Attend the Churches." 
This good and pious man was not ashamed to account for it 
by the fact that there is no Sunday law, and "the masses" can 
find recreation elsewhere, even in the drinking saloons. It is 
frank of him to admit that he and his professional brethren have 
not brains enough to make religious services more attractive 
than shaking dice for cigars or playing cards for drink; but if 
it is a fact he must not expect the local government to assist in 
spreading the gospel by rounding-up the people and corralling 
them in the churches. The truth is, and this gentleman suspects 
it, that "the masses" stay out of hearing of his pulpit because he 
talks nonsense of the most fatiguing kind; they would rather 
do any one of a thousand other things than go to hear it. 
These parsons are like a scolding wife who grieves because her 
husband will not pass his evenings with her. The more she 
grieves, the more she scolds and the more diligently he keeps 
away from her. I don't think Jack Satan is conspicuously 
wise, but he is in the main a good entertainer, with a right 
pretty knack at making people come again; but the really 
reprehensible part of his performance is not the part that 
attracts them. The parsons might study his methods with 
great advantage to religion and morality. 

It may be urged that religious services have not entertain- 
ment for their object. But the people, when not engaged in 
business or labor, have it for their object. If the clergy do not 
choose to adapt their ministrations to the characters of those to 

1S2 



Religion 

whom they wish to minister, that is their own affair; but let 
them accept the consequences. "The masses" move along the 
line of least reluctance. They do not really enjoy Sunday at 
all; they try to get through the day in the manner that is 
least wearisome to the spirit. Possibly their taste is not what 
it ought to be. If this minister were a physician of bodies in- 
stead of souls, and patients who had not called him in should 
refuse to take the medicine which he thought his best and they 
his nastiest, he should either offer them another, a little less 
disagreeable if a little less efficacious, or let them alone. In 
no case is he justified in asking the civil authority to hold their 
noses while he plies the spoon. 

"The masses" have not asked for churches and services; 
they really do not care for anything of the kind — whether they 
ought is another matter. If the clergy choose to supply them, 
that is well and worthy. But they should understand their 
relation to the impenitent worldling, which is precisely that of a 
physician without a mandate from the patient, who may not 
be convinced that there is very much the matter with him. The 
physician may have a diploma and a State certificate authoriz- 
ing him to practise, but if the patient do not deem himself 
bound to be practised upon has the physician a right to make 
him miserable until he will submit? Clearly, he has not. If 
he can not persuade him to come to the dispensary and take 
medicine there is an end to the matter, and he may justly con- 
clude that he is misfitted to his vocation. 

I am sure that the ministers and that singularly small con- 
tingent of earnest and, on the whole, pretty good persons who 
cluster about them do not perceive how alien they are in their 
convictions, tastes, sympathies and general mental habitudes to 

153 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

the great majority of their fellow men and women. Their voices, 
like "the gushing wave" which, to the ears of the lotus-eaters, 

"Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave," 

come to us as from beyond a great gulf — ^mere ghosts of sound, 
almost destitute of signification. We know that they would 
have us do something, but what it is we do not clearly appre- 
hend. We feel that they are concerned for us, but why we 
are imperfectly able to conceive. In an intelligible tongue they 
tell us of unthinkable things. Here and there in the discourse 
we catch a word, a phrase, a sentence — something which, from 
ancestors whose mother-speech it was, we have inherited the 
capacity to understand; but the homily as a whole is devoid 
of meaning. Solemn and sonorous enough it all is, and not un- 
musical, but it lacks its natural accompaniment of shawm and 
sackbut and the wind-swept harp in the willows by the waters 
of Babylon. It is, in fact, something of a survival — the 
memory of a dream. 

VI. 

The first week of January is set apart as a week of prayer. 
It is a custom of more than a half century's age, and it seems 
that "gracious answers have been received in proportion to the 
earnestness and unanimity of the petitions." That is to say, 
in this world's speech, the more Christians that have prayed 
and the more they have meant it, the better the result is known 
to have been. I don't believe all that. I don't believe that 
when God is asked to do something that he had not intended 
to do he counts noses before making up his mind whether to do 
it or not. God probably knows the character of his work, and 

154 



Religion 

knowing that he has made this a world of knaves and dunces he 
must know that the more of them that ask for something, and 
the more loudly they ask, the stronger is the presumption that 
they ought not to have it. And I think God is perhaps less 
concerned about his popularity than some good folk seem to 
suppose. 

Doubtless there are errors in the record of results — some 
things set down as "answers" to prayer which came about 
through the orderly operation of natural laws and would have 
occurred anyhow. I am told that similar errors have been 
made, or are believed to have been made, in the past. In 1 730, 
for example, a good Bishop at Auvergne prayed for an 
eclipse of the sun as a warning to unbelievers. The eclipse 
ensued and the pious prelate made the most of it; but when it 
was shown that the astronomers of the period had foretold it 
he was a sufferer from irreverent gibes. A monk of Treves 
prayed that an enemy of the church, then in Paris, might 
lose his head, and it fell off; but it transpired that, unknown 
(or known) to the monk, the man was under sentence of de- 
capitation when the prayer was made. This is related by 
Ausolus, who piously explains, however, that but for the prayer 
the sentence might perhaps have been commuted to service 
in the galleys. I have myself known a minister to pray for 
rain, and the rain came. Perhaps you can conceive his dis- 
comfiture when I showed him that the weather bureau had 
previously predicted a fair day. 

I do not object to a week of prayer. But why only a 
week? If prayer is "answered" Christians ought to pray all 
the time. That prayer is "answered" the Scripture affirms as 
positively and unequivocally as anything can be affirmed in 
words : "All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, 

15S 



The Shadon> on the Dial and other Essayfs 

that ye shall receive." Why, then, when all the clergy of this 
country prayed publicly for the recovery of President 
McKinley, did the man die? Why is it that although two 
pious Chaplains ask almost daily that goodness and wisdom 
may descend upon Congress, Congress remains wicked and 
unwise? Why is it that although in all the churches and half 
the dwellings of the land God is continually asked for good 
government, good government remains what it always and 
everywhere has been, a dream? From Earth to Heaven in 
unceasing ascension flows a stream of prayer for every blessing 
that man desires, yet man remains unblest, the victim of his own 
folly and passions, the sport of fire, flood, tempest and earth- 
quake, afilicted with famine and disease, war, poverty and 
crime, his world an incredible welter of evil, his life a labor 
and his hope a lie. Is it possible that all this praying is futilized 
and invalidated by the lack of faith? — that the "asking" is 
not credentialed by the "believing?" When the anointed 
minister of Heaven spreads his palms and uprolls his eyes to 
beseech a general blessing or some special advantage is he the 
celebrant of a hollow, meaningless rite, or the dupe of a false 
promise? One does not know, but if one is not a fool one does 
know that his every resultless petition proves him by the in- 
exorable laws of logic to be the one or the other. 

VII. 

Modern Christianity is beautiful exceedingly, and he who 
admires not is eyed batly and minded as the mole. "Sell all 
thou hast," said Christ and "give to the poor." All — no less 
— in order "to be saved." The poor were Christ's peculiar 
care. Ever for them and their privations, and not greatly for 

156 



Religion 

their spiritual darkness, fell from his lips the compassionate 
word, the mandate divine for their relief and cherishing. 
Of foreign missions, of home missions, of mission schools, of 
church buildings, of work among pagans in pariibus infidelium, 
of work among sailors, of communion table, of delegates to 
councils — of any of these things he knew no more than the 
moon man. They were inventions of others, as is the entire 
florid and flamboyant fabric of ecclesiaslicism that has been 
reared, stone by stone and century after century, upon his sim- 
ple life and works and words. "Founder," indeed! He 
founded nothing, instituted nothing; Paul did all that. Christ 
simply went about doing, and being, good — admonishing the 
rich, whom he regarded as criminals, comforting the luckless 
and uttering wisdom with that Oriental indirection wherein 
our stupid ingenuity finds imaginary warrant for all desider- 
ated pranks and fads. 



isr 



Immortality 



Immortalit^^ 




j|HE desire for life everlasting has commonly been 
affirmed to be universal — at least that is the view 
taken by those unacquainted with Oriental faiths 
and with Oriental character. Those of us whose 
knowledge is a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the 
desire is universal or even general. 

If the devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to "live 
alway," he has not succeeded in very clearly formulating the 
desire. The sort of thing that he is pleased to hope for is not 
what we should call life, and not what many of us would care 
for. 

When a man says that everybody has "a horror of annihi- 
lation," we may be very sure that he has not many opportuni- 
ties for observation, or that he has not availed himself of all 
that he has. Most persons go to sleep rather gladly, yet sleep 
is virtual annihilation while it lasts ; and if it should last forever 
the sleeper would be no worse off after a million years of it 
than after an hour of it. There are minds sufficiently logical 
to think of it that way, and to them annihilation is not a dis- 
agreeable thing to contemplate and expect. 

In this matter of immortality, people*s beliefs appear to go 
along with their wishes. The chap who is content with anni- 
hilation thinks he will get it; those that want immortality are 
pretty sure they are immortal, and that is a very comfortable 
allotment of faiths. The few of us that are left unprovided 

161 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

for are those who don't bother themselves much about the 
matter, one way or another. 

The question of human immortahty is the most momentous 
that the mind is capable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the 
dead Hve, all other facts are in comparison trivial and without 
interest. The prospect of obtaining certain knowledge with 
regard to this stupendous matter is not encouraging. In all 
countries but those in barbarism the powers of the profoundest 
and most penetrating intelligences have been ceaselessly ad- 
dressed to the task of glimpsing a life beyond this life; yet 
today no one can truly say that he knows. It is still as much 
a matter of faith as ever it was. 

Our modern Christian nations hold a passionate hope and 
belief in another world, yet the most popular writer and 
speaker of his time, the man whose lectures drew the largest 
audiences, the work of whose pen brought him the highest 
rewards, was he who most strenuously strove to destroy 
the ground of that hope and unsettle the foundations of that 
belief. 

The famous and popular Frenchman, Professor of Spec- 
tacular Astronomy, Camille Flammarion, affirms inmiortality 
because he has talked with departed souls who said that it was 
true. Yes, Monsieur, but surely you know the rule about 
hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are very particular 
about that. Your testimony is of that character. 

M. Flammarion says: 

"I don't repudiate the presumptive arguments of school 
men. I merely supplement them with something positive. For 
instance, if you assumed the existence of God this argument of 
the scholastics is a good one. God has implanted in all men 
the desire of perfect happiness. This desire can not be satis- 

162 



Immorialiiy 

fied in our lives here. If there were not another Hfe wherein 
to satisfy it then God would be a deceiver. Voila tout.** 

There is more: the desire of perfect happiness does not 
imply immortality, even if there is a God, for 

( 1 ) God may not have implanted it, but merely suffers 
it to exist, as He suffers sin to exist, the desire of wealth, the 
desire to live longer than we do in this world. It is not held 
that God implanted all the desires of the human heart. Then 
why hold that He implanted that of perfect happiness? 

(2) Even if He did — even if a divinely implanted de- 
sire entail its own gratification — even if it can not be gratified 
in this life — that does not imply immortality. It implies only 
another life long enough for its gratification just once. An 
eternity of gratification is not a logical inference from it. 

(3) Perhaps God is "a deceiver" who knows that He is 
not? Assumption of the existence of a God is one thing; as- 
sumption of the existence of a God who is honorable and can- 
did according to our finite conception of honor and candor is 
another. 

(4) There may be an honorable and candid God. He 
may have implanted in us the desire of perfect happiness. It 
may be — it is — impossible to gratify that desire in this life. 
Still, another life is not implied, for God may not have in- 
tended us to draw the inference that He is going to gratify it. 
If omniscient and omnipotent, God must be held to have in- 
tended, whatever occurs, but no such God is assumed in 
M. Flammarion's illustration, and it may be that God's knowl- 
edge and power are limited, or that one of them is limited. 

M. Flammarion is a learned, if somewhat "yellow," as- 
tronomer. He has a tremendous imagination, which naturally 
is more at home in the marvelous and catastrophic than in the 

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The ShadoTV on the Dial and other Essays 

orderly regions of familiar phenomena. To him the heavens 
are an immense pyrotechnicon and he is the master of the show 
and sets off the fireworks. But he knows nothing of logic, 
which is the science of straight thinking, and his views of things 
have therefore no value; they are nebulous. 

Nothing is clearer than that our pre-existence is a dream, 
having absolutely no basis in anything that we know or can 
hope to know. Of after-existence there is said to be evidence, 
or rather testimony, in assurances of those who are in present 
enjoyment of it — if it is enjoyable. Whether this testimony 
has actually been given — and it is the only testimony worth a 
moment's consideration — is a disputed point. Many persons 
while living this life have professed to have received it. But 
nobody professes, or ever has professed, to have received a 
communication of any kind from one in actual experience of 
the fore-life. "The souls as yet ungarmented," if such there 
are, are dumb to question. The Land beyond the Grave has 
been, if not observed, yet often and variously described: if 
not explored and surveyed, yet carefully charted. From 
among so many accounts of it that we have, he must be fastid- 
ious indeed who can not be suited. But of the Fatherland that 
spreads before the cradle — the great Heretofore, wherein we 
all dwelt if we are to dwell in the Hereafter, we have no ac- 
count. Nobody professes knowledge of that. No testimony 
reaches our ears of flesh concerning its topographical or other 
features; no one has been so enterprising as to wrest from its 
actual inhabitants any particulars of their character and ap- 
pearance, to refresh our memory withal. And among edu- 
cated experts and professional proponents of worlds to be 
there is a general denial of its existence. 

164 



Immortality 

I am of their way of thinking about that. The fact that 
we have no recollection of a former life is entirely conclusive 
of the matter. To have lived an unrecollected life is impossible 
and unthinkable, for there would be nothing to connect the 
new life with the old — no thread of continuity — nothing that 
persisted from the one life to the other. The later birth is that 
of another person, an altogether different being, unrelated to 
the first — a new John Smith succeeding to the late Tom Jones, 

Let us not be misled here by a false analogy. Today I 
may get a thwack on the mazzard which will give me an in- 
tervening season of unconsciousness between yesterday and 
tomorrow. Thereafter I may live to a green old age with no 
recollection of anything that I knew, or did, or was before the 
accident; yet I shall be the same person, for between the old 
life and the new there will be a nexus, a thread of continuity, 
something spanning the gulf from the one state to the other, 
and the same in both — namely, my body with its habits, ca- 
pacities and powers. That is I; that identifies me as my 
former self — authenticates and credentials me as the person 
that incurred the cranial mischance, dislodging memory. 

But when death occurs all is dislodged if memory is; for 
between two merely mental or spiritual existences memory is 
the only nexus conceivable; consciousness of identity is the 
only identity. To live again without memory of having lived 
before is to live another. Re-existence without recollection is 
absurd; there is nothing to re-exist. 



165 



Opportunity 



opportunity 




HIS is not a country of equal fortunes; outside a 
Socialist's dream no such country exists or can 
exist. But as nearly as possible this is a country 
of equal opportunities for those who begin life 
with nothing but nature's endowments — and of such is the 
kingdom of success. 

In nine instances in ten successful Americans — that is 
Americans who have succeeded in any worthy ambition or le- 
gitimate field of endeavor — have started with nothing but the 
skin they stood in. It almost may be said, indeed, that to begin 
with nothing is a main condition of success — in America. 

To a young man there is no such hopeless impediment as 
wealth or the expectation of wealth. Here a man and there a 
man will be born so abundantly endowed by nature as to over- 
come the handicap of artificial "advantages," but that is not 
the rule; usually the chap "born with a gold spoon in his 
mouth" puts in his time sucking that spoon, and without other 
employment. Counting possession of the spoon success, why 
should he bestir himself to achieve what he already has? 

The real curled darling of opportunity has nothing in his 
mouth but his teeth and his appetite — he knows, or is likely 
to know, what it is to feel his belly sticking to his back. If he 
have brains a-plenty he will get on, for he must be up and doing 
— the penalty of indiligence is famine. If he have not, he 
may up and do to the uttermost satisfaction of his mind and 
heart, but the end of that man is failure, with possibly Social- 
ism, that last resort of conscious incompetence. It fatigues, 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

this talk of the narrowing opportunities of today, the "closed 
avenues to success," and the rest of it. Doubtless it serves its 
purpose of making mischief for the tyrant trusts and the wicked 
rich generally, but in a six months' bound volume of it there is 
not enough of truth to float a religion. 

Men of brains never had a better chance than now to ac- 
complish all that it is desirable that they should accomplish; 
and men of no brains never did have much of a chance, nor 
under any possible conditions can have in this country, nor in 
any other. They are nature's failures, God's botchwork. Let 
us be sorry for them, treating them justly and generously ; but 
the Socialism that would level us all down to their plane of 
achievement and reward is a proposal of which they are them- 
selves the only proponents. 

Opportunity, indeed! Who is holding me from compos- 
ing a great opera that would make me rich and famous? 

What oppressive laws forbade me to work my passage up 
the Yukon as deckhand on a steamboat and discover the gold 
along Bonanza creek? 

What is there in our industrial system that conceals from 
me the secret of making diamonds from charcoal? 

Why was it not I who, entering a lawyer's office as a suit- 
able person to sweep it out, left it as an appointed Justice of 
the Supreme Court? 

The number of actual and possible sources of profit and 
methods of distinction is infinite. Not all the trusts in the 
world combined in one trust of trusts could appreciably reduce 
it — could condemn to permanent failure one man with the tal- 
ent and the will to succeed. They can abolish that doubtful 
benefactor of the "small dealer," who lives by charging too 
much, and that very thickly disguised blessing the "drummer," 

170 



opportunity 

whom they have to add to the price of everything they sell; 
but for every opportunity they close they open a new one and 
leave untouched a thousand actual and a million possible ones. 
As to their dishonest practices, these are conspicuous and 
striking, because "lumped," but no worse than the silent, 
steady aggregate of cheating by which their constituent firms 
and individuals formerly consumed the consumer without his 
special wonder. 



171 



Charity 



Charity 




HE promoter of organized charity protests against 
"the wasteful and mischievous method of undi- 
rected rehef." He means, naturally, relief that 
is not directed by somebody else than the person 
giving it — undirected by him and his kind — professional 
almoners — ^philanthropists who deem it more blessed to allot 
than to bestow. Indubitably much is wasted and some mis- 
chief done by indiscriminate giving — and individual givers are 
addicted to that faulty practice. But there is something to be 
said for "undirected relief" quite the same. It blesses not only 
him who receives (when he is worthy; and when he is not up- 
on his own head be it), but him who gives. To those uncal- 
culating persons who, despite the protests of the organized 
charitable, concede a certain moral value to the spontaneous 
impulses of the heart and read in the word "relief" a double 
meaning, the office of the mere distributor is imperfectly sacred. 
He is even without scriptural authority, and lives in the per- 
petual challenge of a moral quo warranto. Nevertheless he is 
not without his uses. He is a tapper of tills that do not open 
automatically. He is almoner to the uncompassionate, who 
but for him would give no alms. He negotiates unnatural but 
not censurable relations between selfishness and ingratitude. 
The good that he does is purely material. He makes two 
leaves of fat to grow where but one grew before, lessens the 
sum of gastric pangs and dorsal chills. All this is something, 
certainly, but it generates no warm and elevated sentiments and 
does nothing in mitigation of the poor's animosity to the 

175 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

rich. Organized charity is a sapid and savorless thing; its 
place among moral agencies is no higher than that of root beer. 

Christ did not say "Sell whatsoever thou hast and give to 
the church to give to the poor." He did not mention the As- 
sociated Charities of the period. I do not find the words "The 
Little Sisters of the Poor ye have always with you," nor "In- 
asmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these Dorcas 
societies ye have done it unto me." Nowhere do I find myself 
commanded to enable others to comfort the afflicted and visit 
the sick and those in prison. Nowhere is recorded God's 
blessing upon him who makes himself a part of a charity ma- 
chine — no, not even if he be the guiding lever of the whole 
mechanism. 

Organized charity is a delusion and a snare. It enables 
Munniglut to think himself a good man for paying annual dues 
and buying transferable meal tickets. Munniglut is not 
thereby, a good man. On the Last Great Day, when he 
cowers in the Ineffable Presence and is asked for an accounting 
it will not help him to say, "Hearing that A was in want I 
gave money for his need to B." Nor will it help B to say, 
"When A was in distress I asked C to relieve him, and myself 
allotted the relief according to a resolution of D, E and F." 

There are blessings and benefactions that one would will- 
ingly forego — among them the poor. Quack remedies for 
poverty amuse; a real specific would kindle a noble enthusi- 
asm. Yet the world would lose much by it; human nature 
would suffer a change for the worse. Happily and unhappily 
poverty is not abolishable: "The poor ye have always with 
you" is a sentence that can never become unintelhgible. Ef- 
fect of a thousand causes, poverty is invincible, eternal. And 
since we must have it let us thank God for it and avail our- 

176 



Charityj 

selves of all its advantages to mind and character. He who 
is not good to the deserving poor — who knows not those of his 
immediate environment, who goes not among them making 
inquiry of their personal needs, who does not wish with all his 
heart and both his hands to relieve them — is a fool. 



177 



Emancipated 
Woman . . . 



Emancipated Woman 




HAT I should like to know is, how "the enlarge- 
ment of woman*s sphere" by entrance into the 
various activities of commercial, professional and 
industrial life benefits the sex. It may please 
Helen Gougar and satisfy her sense of logical accuracy to 
say, as she does: "We women must work in order to fill the 
places left vacant by liquor-drinking men." But who filled 
these places before? Did they remain vacant, or were there 
then disappointed applicants, as now> If my memory serves, 
there has been no time in the period that it covers when the 
supply of workers — abstemious male workers — was not in ex- 
cess of the demand. That it has always been so is sufficiently 
attested by the universally inadequate wage rate. 

Employers seldom fail, and never for long, to get all the 
workmen they need. The field, then, into which women have 
put their sickles was already overcrowded with reapers. 
Whatever employment women have obtained has been got by 
displacing men — who would otherwise be supporting women. 
Where is the general advantage? We may shout "high 
tariff," "combination of capital," "demonetization of silver," 
and what not, but if searching for the cause of augmented 
poverty and crime, "industrial discontent," and the tramp evil, 
instead of dogmatically expounding it, we should take some 
account of this enormous, sudden addition to the number of 
workers seeking work. If any one thinks that within the brief 
period of a generation the visible supply of labor can be enor- 
mously augmented without profoundly affecting the stability 

181 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

of things and disastrously touching the interests of wage- 
workers, let no rude voice dispel his dream of such maleficent 
agencies as his slumbrous understanding may joy to affirm. 
And let our Widows of Ashur unlung themselves in advocacy 
of quack remedies for evils for which they themselves are 
cause; it remains true that when the contention of two lions 
for one bone is exacerbated by the accession of a lioness the 
squabble is not composable by stirring up some bears in the 
cage adjacent. 

Indubitably a woman is under no obligation to sacrifice 
herself to the good of her sex by refusing needed employment 
in the hope that it may fall to a man gifted with dependent 
women. Nevertheless our congratulations are more intelligent 
when bestowed upon her individual head than when sifted into 
the hair of all Eve's daughters. This is a world of complexi- 
ties, in which the lines of interest are so intertangled as fre- 
quently to transgress that of sex; and one ambitious to help 
but half the race may profitably know that every effort to that 
end provokes a counterbalancing mischief. The "enlargement 
of woman's opportunities" has benefited individual women. 
It has not benefited the sex as a whole, and has distinctly dam- 
aged the race. The mind that can not discern a score of great 
and irreparable general evils distinctly traceable to "emanci- 
pation of woman" is as impregnable to the light as a toad in a 
rock. 

A marked demerit of the new order of things — the regime 
of female commercial service — is that its main advantage 
accrues, not to the race, not to the sex, not to the class, not to 
the individual woman, but to the person of least need and 
worth — the male employer. (Female employers in any con- 
siderable number there will not be, but those that we have 

182 



Emancipated Woman 



could give the male ones profitable instruction in grinding the 
faces of their employees.) This constant increase of the army 
of labor — always and everywhere too large for the work in 
sight — by accession of a new contingent of natural oppressibles 
makes the very teeth of old Munniglut thrill with a poignant 
delight. It brings in that situation known as two laborers seek- 
ing one job — and one of them a person whose bones he can 
easily grind to make his bread. And Munniglut is a miller of 
skill and experience, dusted all over with the evidence of his 
useful craft. When Heaven has assisted the Daughters of 
Hope to open to women a new "avenue of opportunities" the 
first to enter and walk therein, like God in the Garden of 
Eden, is the good Mr. Munniglut, contentedly smoothing the 
folds out of the superior slope of his paunch, exuding the 
peculiar aroma of his oleaginous personality, and larding the 
new roadway with the overflow of a righteousness secreted by 
some spiritual gland stimulated to action by relish of his own 
identity. And ever thereafter the subtle suggestion of a fat 
Philistinism lingers along the path of progress like an assertion 
of a possessory right. 

It is God's own crystal truth that in dealing with women 
unfortunate enough to be compelled to earn their own living 
and fortunate enough to have wrested from Fate an opportunity 
to do so, men of business and affairs treat them with about the 
same delicate consideration that they show to dogs and horses 
of the inferior breeds. It does not commonly occur to the 
wealthy "professional man," or "prominent merchant," to be 
ashamed to add to his yearly thousands a part of the salary 
justly due to his female bookkeeper or typewriter, who sits 
before him all day with an empty belly in order to have an 
habilimented back. He has a vague, hazy notion that the law 

183 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essa})s 

of supply and demand is mandatory, and that in submitting 
himself to it by paying her a half of what he would have to 
pay a man of inferior efficiency he is supplying the world with 
a noble example of obedience. I must take the liberty to 
remind him that the law of supply and demand is not impera- 
tive; it is not a statute, but a phenomenon. He may reply: 
"It is imperative; the penalty for disobedience is failure. If 
I pay more in salaries and wages than I need to, my competitor 
will not; and with that advantage he will drive me from the 
field." If his margin of profit is so small that he must eke it 
out by coining the sweat of his workmen into nickels, I've 
nothing to say to him. Let him adopt in peace the motto, "I 
cheat to eat." I do not know why he should eat, but Nature, 
who has provided sustenance for the worming sparrow, the 
sparrowing owl, and the owling eagle, approves the needy man 
of prey, and makes a place for him at table. 

Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking 
virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch — as 
cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage 
of the coward. Nobody is altogether bad; the scoundrel 
who has grown rich by underpaying the workmen in his factory 
will sometimes endow an asylum for indigent seamen. To 
oppress one's own workmen, and provide for the workmen of 
a neighbor — to skin those in charge of one's own interests, 
while cottoning and oiling the residuary product of another's 
skinnery — that is not very good benevolence, nor very good 
sense, but it serves in place of both. The man who eats pate 
de fois gras in the sweat of his girl cashier's face, or wears 
purple and fine linen in order that his typewriter may have an 
eocene gown and a pliocene hat, seems a tolerably satisfactory 
specimen of the genus thief; but let us not forget that in his 

184 



Emancipated Woman 



own home — a fairly good one — he may enjoy and merit that 
highest and most honorable title in the hierarchy of woman's 
favor, "a good provider." One having a just claim to that 
glittering distinction should enjoy a sacred immunity from the 
coarse and troublesome question, "From whose backs and 
bellies do you provide?" 

So much for the material results to the sex. What are the 
moral results? One does not like to speak of them, particu- 
larly to those who do not and can not know — to good women 
in whose innocent minds female immorality is inseparable from 
flashy gowning and the painted face; to foolish, book-taught 
men who honestly believe in some protective sanctity that 
hedges womanhood. If men of the world with years enough 
to have lived out of the old regime into the new would testify 
in this matter there would ensue a great rattling of dry bones 
in bodices of reform ladies. Nay, if the young man about 
town, knowing nothing of how things were in the "dark back- 
ward and abysm of time," but something of the moral difference 
between even so free-running a creature as the society girl and 
the average working girl of the factory, the shop and the office, 
would speak out (under assurance of immunity from prosecu- 
tion) his testimony would be a surprise to the cartilaginous 
virgins, blowsy matrons, acrid relicts and hairy males of Eman- 
cipation. It would pain, too, some very worthy but unobservant 
persons not in sympathy with "the cause." 

Certain significant facts are within the purview of all but 
the very young and the comfortably blind. To the woman of 
today the man of today is imperfectly polite. In place of rev- 
erence he gives her "deference;" to the language of compli- 
ment has succeeded the language of raillery. Men have almost 
forgotten how to bow. Doubtless the advanced female prefers 

185 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

the new manner, as may some of her less forward sisters, think- 
ing it more sincere. It is not; our giddy grandfather talked 
high-flown nonsense because his heart had tangled his tongue. 
He treated his woman more civilly than we ours because 
he loved her better. He never had seen her on the "rostrum" 
and in the lobby, never had seen her in advocacy of herself, 
never had read her confessions of his sins, never had felt the 
stress of her competition, nor himself assisted by daily personal 
contact in rubbing the bloom off her. He did not know that 
her virtues were due to her secluded life, but thought, dear old 
boy, that they were a gift of God. 



186 



The Opposing Sex 



The Opposing Sex 




IMANCIPATION of woman is not of American 
invention. The "movement," like most others 
that are truly momentous, originated in Europe, 
and has broken through and broken down more 
formidable barriers of law, custom and tradition there than 
here. It is not true that the English married woman is "vir- 
tually a bondwoman" to her husband; that "she can hardly 
go and come without his consent, and usually he does not con- 
sent;" that "all she has is his." If there is such a thing as "the 
bitterness of the English married woman to the law," under- 
lying it there is such a thing as ignorance of what the law is. 
The "subjection of woman," as it exists today in England, is 
customary and traditionary — a social, not a legal, subjection. 
Nowhere has law so sharply challenged that male dominion 
whose seat is in the harder muscles, the larger brain and the 
coarser heart. And the law, it may be worth while to point 
out, was not of woman bom ; nor was it handed down out of 
Heaven engraved on tables of stone. Learned English judges 
have decided that virtually the term "marital rights" has no 
longer a legal signification. As one writer puts it, "The law has 
relaxed the husband's control over his wife's person and for- 
tune, bit by bit, until legally it has left him nothing but the 
power to prevent her, if he is so disposed, and arrives in time, 
from jumping out of the window." He will find it greatly to 
his interest to arrive in time when he conveniently can, and to 
be so disposed, for the husband is still liable for the wife's torts ; 

189 



The Shadow on the . Dial and other Essays 

and if she makes the leap he may have to pay for the telescop- 
ing of a subjacent hat or two. 

In England it is the Tyrant Man himself who is chafing 
in his chain. Not only is a husband still liable for the wrongs 
committed by the wife whom he has no longer the power to 
restrain from committing them, but in many ways — in one very 
important way — ^his obligation to her remains intact after she 
has had the self-sacrifice to surrender all obligation to him. 
Moreover, if his wife has a separate estate he has to endure the 
pain of seeing it hedged about from her creditors (themselves 
not altogether happy in the contemplation) with restrictions 
which do not hamper the right of recourse against his own. 
Doubtless all this is not without a softening effect upon his char- 
acter, smoothing down his dispositional asperities and endow- 
ing him day by day with fresh accretions of humility. And 
that is good for him. I do not say that female autonomy is not 
among the most efficacious agencies for man's reclamation from 
the sin of pride; I only say that it is not indigenous to this 
country, the sweet, sweet home of the assassiness, the happy 
hunting ground of the whiplady, the paradise of the vitrioleuse. 

If the protagonists of woman suffrage are frank they are 
shallow; if wise, uncandid. Continually they affirm their 
conviction that political power in the hands of women will 
give us better government. To proof of that proposition they 
address all the powers that they have and marshal such facts 
as can be compelled to serve under their flag. They either 
think or profess to think that if they can show that women's 
votes will purify politics they will have proved their case. 
That is not true; whether they know it or not, the strongest 
objection to woman suffrage would remain untouched. Pure 
politics is desirable, certainly, but it is not the chief concern of 

190 



The Opposing Sex 



the best and most intelligent citizens. Good government is 
"devoutly to be wished," but more than good government we 
need good women. If all our public affairs were to be ordered 
with the goodness and wisdom of angels, and this state of per- 
fection were obtained by sacrifice of any of those qualities 
which make the best of our women, if not what they should be, 
nor what the mindless male thinks them, at least what they are, 
we should have purchased the advantage too dearly. The 
effect of woman suffrage upon the country is of secondary im- 
portance: the question for profitable consideration is. How 
will it affect the character of woman? He who does not see 
in the goodness and charm of such women as are good and 
charming something incalculably more precious than any de- 
gree of political purity or national prosperity may be a patriot : 
doubtless he is; but also he has the distinction to be a pig. 

I should like to ask the gallant gentlemen who vote for 
removal of woman's political disability if they have observed 
in the minds and manners of the women in the forefront of 
the movement nothing "ominous and drear." Are not these 
women different — I don't say worse, just different — from the 
best types of women of peace who are not exhibits and audi- 
bles? If they are different, is the difference of such a nature 
as to encourage a hope that activity in public affairs will work 
an improvement in women generally? Is "the glare of pub- 
licity" good for her growth in grace and winsomeness? Would 
a sane and sensible husband or lover willingly forego in wife or 
sweetheart all that the colonels of her sex appear to lack, or 
find in her all that they appear to have and to value? 

A few more questions — addressed more particularly to 
veteran observers than to those to whom the world is new and 
strange. Have you observed any alteration in the manner of 

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The ShadoTV on the Dial and other Essays 

men toward women? If so, is it in the direction of greater 
rudeness or of more ceremonious respect? And again, if so, 
has not the change, in point of time, been coincident with the 
genesis and development of woman's "emeuicipation" and her 
triumphal entry into the field of "affairs"? Are you really 
desirous that the change go further? Or do you think that 
when women are armed with the ballot they will compel a re- 
turn of the old regime of deference and delicate consideration 
— extorting by their power the tribute once voluntarily paid 
to their weakness? Is there any known way by which women 
can at once be our political equals and our social superiors, our 
competitors in the sharp and bitter struggle for glory, gain or 
bread, and the objects of our unselfish and undiminished devo- 
tion? The present predicts the future; of the foreshadow of 
the coming event all sensitive female hearts feel the chill. 
For whatever advantages, real or illusory, some women enjoy 
under this regime of partial "emancipation" all women pay. 
Of the coin in which payment is made the shouldering shouters 
of the sex have not a groat and can bear the situation with 
impunity. They have either passed the age of masculine 
attention or were born without the means to its accroachment. 
Dwelling in the open bog, they can afford to defy eviction. 

While men did nearly all the writing and public speak- 
ing of the world, setting so the fashion in thought, women, 
naturally extolled with true sexual extravagance, came to be 
considered, even by themselves, as a very superior order of 
beings, with something in them of divinity which was denied 
to man. Not only were they represented as better, generally, 
than men, as indeed anybody could see that they were, but 
their goodness was supposed to be a kind of spiritual endow- 
ment and more or less independent of environmental influences. 

192 



The Opposing Sex 



We are changing all that. Women are beginning to do much 
of the writing and public speaking, and not only are they going 
to extol us (to the fattening of our conceit) but they are bound 
to disclose, even to the unthinking, certain defects of character 
in themselves which their silence had veiled. Their competi- 
tion, too, in several kinds of affairs will slowly but certainly 
provoke resentment, and moreover expose them to temptations 
which will distinctly lower the morality of their sex. All these 
changes, and many more having a similar effect and signifi- 
cance, are occurring with amazing rapidity, and the stated 
results are already visible to even the blindest observation. In 
accurate depiction of the new order of things conjecture fails, 
but so much we know: the woman-superstition has already 
received its death wound and must soon expire. 

Everywhere, and in no reverential spirit, men are question- 
ing the dear old idolatry; not "sapping a solemn creed with 
solemn sneer," but dispassionately applying to its basic doc- 
trine the methods of scientific criticism. He who within even 
the last twenty years has not marked in society, in letters, in 
art, in everything, a distinct change in man's attitude toward 
women — a change which, were one a woman, one would not 
wish to see — may reasonably conclude that much, otherwise 
observable, is hidden by his nose. In the various movements — 
none of them consciously iconoclastic — engaged in overthrow- 
ing this oddest of modern superstitions there is something to 
deprecate, and even deplore, but the superstition can be spared. 
It never had much in it that was either creditable or profitable, 
and all through its rituals ran a note of insincerity which was 
partly Nature's protest against the rites, but partly, too, hypoc- 
risy. There is no danger that good men will ever cease to 
respect and love good women, and if bad men ever cease to 

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The Shadofv on the Dial and other Essays 

adore them for their sex when not beating them for their vir- 
tues the gain in consistency will partly offset the loss in religious 
ecstasy. 

Let the patriot abandon his fear, his betters their hope, that 
only the low class woman will vote — the unlettered wench of 
the slums, the raddled hag of the dives, the war-painted protegee 
of the police. Into the vortex of politics goes every floating 
thing that is free to move. The summons to the polls will be 
imperative and incessant. Duty will thunder it from every 
platform, conscience whisper it into every ear, pride, interest, 
the lust of victory — all the motives that impel men to partisan 
activity will act with equal power upon women as upon men; 
and to all the other forces flowing irresistibly toward the polls 
will be added the suasion of men themselves. The price of 
votes will not decline because of the increased supply, although 
it will in most instances be offered in currencies too subtle to 
be counted. As now, the honest and respectable elector will 
habitually take bribes in the invisible coin of the realm of Senti- 
ment — a mintage peculiarly valued by woman. For one rea- 
son or another all women will vote, even those who now view 
the "right" with aversion. The observer who has marked the 
strength and activity of the forces pent in the dark drink of 
politics and given off in the act of bibation will not expect in- 
action to the victim of the "habit," be he male or she female. 
In the partisan, conviction is compulsion — opinions bear fruit 
in conduct. The partisan thinks in deeds, and woman is by 
nature a partisan — a blessing for which the Lord has never 
made her male relatives and friends sufficiently thankful. Not 
a mere man of them would have the effrontery to ask her tol- 
eration if she were not. Depend upon it, the full strength of 
the female vote will eventually be cast at every election. And 

194 



The Opposing Sex 



it would be well indeed for civilization and the interests of the 
race if woman suffrage meant no more than going to the 
polling-place and polling — which clearly is all that it has been 
thought out to mean by the headless horsemen spurring their 
new hobbies bravely at the tail of the procession. That would 
be a very simple matter; the opposition based upon the impro- 
priety of the female rubbing shoulders at the polls with such 
scurvy blackguards as ourselves may with advantage be retired 
from service. Nor is it particularly important what men and 
measures the women will vote for. By one means or another 
Tyrant Man will have his way ; the Opposing Sex can merely 
obstruct him in his way of having it. And should that obstruc- 
tion ever be too pronounced, the party line and the sex line 
coinciding, woman suffrage will then and thenceforth be no 
more. 

In the politics of this bad world majorities are of several 
kinds. One of the most "overwhelming" is made up of these 
simple elements: (1) a numerical minority; (2) a military 
superiority. If not a single election were ever in any degree 
affected by it, the introduction of woman suffrage into our 
scheme of manners and morals would nevertheless be the most 
momentous and mischievous event of modern history. Com- 
pared with the action of this destructive solvent, that of all 
other disintegrating agencies concerned in our decivilization is 
as the languorous indiligence of rosewater to the mordant fury 
of nitric acid. 

Lively Woman is indeed, as Carlyle would put it, "hell- 
bent" on purification of politics by adding herself as an in- 
gredient. It is unlikely that the injection of her personality 
into the contention (and politics is essentially a contention) 
will allay any animosities, sweeten any tempers, elevate any 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

motives. The strifes of women are distinctly meaner than 
those of men — which are out of all reason mean ; their methods 
of overcoming opponents distinctly more unscrupulous. That 
their participation in politics will notably alter the conditions 
of the game is not to be denied; that, unfortunately, is ob- 
vious; but that it will make the player less mahgnant and the 
playing more honorable is a proposition in support of which 
one can utter a deal of gorgeous nonsense, with a less insup- 
portable sense of its unfitness, than in the service of any other 
delusion. 

The frosty truth is that except in the home the influence of 
women is not elevating, but debasing. When they stoop to 
uplift men who need uplifting, they are themselves pulled 
down, and that is all that is accomplished. Wherever they 
come into familiar contact with men who are not their relatives 
they impart nothing, they receive all; they do not affect us 
with their notions of morality; we infect them with ours. In 
the last forty years, in this country, they have entered a hun- 
dred avenues of activity from which they were previously 
debarred by an unwritten law. They are found in the offices, 
the shops, the factories. Like Charles Lamb's fugitive pigs, 
they have run up all manner of streets. Does any one think 
that in that time there has been an advance in professional, 
commercial and industrial morality? Are lawyers more scru- 
pulous, tradesmen more honest? When one has been served 
by a "saleslady" does one leave the shop with a feebler sense 
of injury than was formerly inspired by a transaction at the 
counter — a duller consciousness of being oneself the commod- 
ity that has changed hands? Have actresses elevated the stage 
to a moral altitude congenial to the colder virtues? In studios 
of the artists is the "sound of revelry by night" invariably a 

196 



The Opposing Sex 



deep, masculine bass? In literature are the immoral books — 
the books "dealing" with questionable "questions" — always, 
or even commonly, written by men? 

There is one direction in which "emancipation of woman" 
and enlargement of her "sphere" have wrought a reform: they 
have elevated the personnel of the little dinner party in the 
"private room." Formerly, as any veteran man-about-town 
can testify, if he will, the female contingent of the party was 
composed of persons altogether unspeakable. That element 
now remains upon its reservation; among the superior advan- 
tages enjoyed by the man-about-town of today is that of the 
companionship, at his dinner in camera, of ladies having an 
honorable vocation. In the corridors of the "French restau- 
rant" the swish of Pseudonyma's skirt is no longer heard; she 
has been superseded by the Princess Tap-tap (with Truckle 
& Cinch), by my lady Snip-snip (from the "emporium" of 
Boltwhack & Co.) , by Miss Chink-chink, who sits at the re- 
ceipt of customs in that severely un-French restaurant, the 
Maison Hash. That the man-about-town has been morally 
elevated by this Emancipation of Girl from the seclusion of 
home to that of the "private room" is too obvious for denial. 
Nothing so uplifts Tyrant Man as the table talk of good young 
women who earn their own living. 

I do not wish to be altogether ironical about this rather 
serious matter — not so much so as to forfeit anything of lucidity. 
Let me state, then, in all earnestness and sobriety and sim- 
plicity of speech, what is known to every worldly-wise male 
dweller in the cities, to every scamp and scapegrace of the 
clubs, to every reformed sentimentalist and every observer with 
a straight eye — namely, that in all the various classes of young 
women in our cities who support, or partly support, themselves 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

in vocations which bring them into personal contact with men, 
female chastity is a vanishing tradition. In the Hves of the 
"main and general" of these, all those considerata which have 
their origin in personal purity, and cluster about it, and are its 
signs and safeguards, have almost ceased to cut a figure. It is 
needless to remind me that there are exceptions — I know that. 
With some of them I have personal acquaintance, or think I 
have, and for them a respect withheld from any woman of the 
rostrum who points to their misfortune and calls it emancipa- 
tion — to their need and calls it a spirit of independence. It 
is not from these good girls that you will hear the flippant 
boast of an unfettered life, with "freedom to develop;" nor is 
it they who will be foremost and furious in denial and resent- 
ment of my statements regarding the morals of their class. 
They do not know the whole truth, thank Heaven, but they 
know enough for a deprecation too deep to find relief in a 
cheap affirmation of woman's purity, which is, and always has 
been, the creature of seclusion. 

The fitness of women for political activity is not in present 
question; I am considering the fitness of political activity for 
women. For women as men say they are, wish them to be, 
and try to think them, it is unfit altogether — as unfit as any- 
thing else that "mixes them up" with us, compelling a com- 
munication and association that are not social. If we wish to 
have women who are different from ourselves in knowledge, 
character, accomplishments, manners; as different mentally as 
physically — and in these and in all other expressible differences 
reside all the charms that they have for us — we must keep 
them, or they must keep themselves, in an environment unlike 
our own. One would think that obvious to the meanest ca- 
pacity, and might even hope that it would be understood by 

198 



The Opposing Sex 



the Daughters of Thunder. Possibly the Advanced One, hos- 
pitably accepting her karma, is not concerned to be charming 
to "the likes o' we" — would prefer the companionship of her 
blue gingham umbrella, her corkscrew curls, her epicene audi- 
ences and her name in the newspapers. Perhaps she is con- 
tent with the comfort of her raucous voice. Therein she is 
unwise, for self-interest is the first law. When we no longer 
find woman charming we may find a way to make them more 
useful — more truly useful, even, than the speech-ladies would 
have them make themselves by competition. Really, there is 
nothing in the world between them and slavery but their power 
of interesting us ; and that has its origin in the very differences 
which the Colonels are striving to abolish. God has made no 
law of miracles and none of His laws are going to be sus- 
pended in deference to woman's desire to achieve familiarity 
without contempt. If she wants to please she must retain 
some scrap of novelty; if she desires our respect she must 
not be always in evidence, disclosing the baser ^ide of her char- 
acter, as in competition with us she must do (as we do to one 
another) or lamentably fail. Mrs. Edmund Gosse, like 
"Ouida," Mrs. Atherton, and all other women of brains, de- 
clares that the taking of unfair advantages — the lack of mag- 
nanimity — is a leading characteristic of her sex. Mrs. Gosse 
adds, with reference to men's passive acquiescence in 
this monstrous folly of "emancipation," that possibly our quiet 
may be the calm before the storm ; and she utters this warning, 
which, also, more strongly, "Ouida" has uttered: "How 
would it be with us if the men should suddenly rise en masse 
and throw the whole surging lot of us into convents and 
harems?" 

199 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essa})s 

It is not likely that men will "rise en masse^' to undo the 
mischief wrought by noisy protagonists of Woman Suffrage 
working like beavers to rear their airy fad upon the sandy foun- 
dation of masculine tolerance and inattention. No rising will 
be needed. All that is required for the wreck of their hopes 
is for a wave of reason to slide a little farther up the sands of 
time, "loll out its large tongue, lick the whole labor flat." 
The work has prospered so far only because nobody but its 
promoters has taken it seriously. It has not engaged attention 
from those having the knowledge and the insight to discern 
beneath its cap-and-bells and the motley that is its only wear 
a serious menace to all that civilized men hold precious in 
woman. It is of the nature of men — themselves cheerful po- 
lygamists, with no penitent intentions — to set a high value upon 
chastity in woman. (We need not inquire why they do so; 
those to whom the reasons are not clear Ccin profitably remeiin 
in the valley of the shadow of ignorance.) Valuing it, they 
purpose having it, or some considerable numerical presumption 
of it. As they perceive that in a general way women are virtu- 
ous in proportion to the remoteness of their lives and interests 
from the lives and interests of men — their seclusion from the 
influences of which men's own vices are a main part — an easy 
and peaceful meeins will doubtless be found for the repression 
of the shouters. 

In the orchestration of mind womcin's instruments might 
have kept silence without injury to the volume and quality of 
die music; efface the impress of her touch upon the world 
and, by those who come after, the blank must be diligently 
sought. Go to the top of any large city and look about cind 
below. It is not much that you will see, but it represents an 
amazing advcince from the conditions of primitive man. No- 

200 



The Opposing Sex 



where in the wide survey will you see the work of woman. It 
is all the work of men's hands, and before it was wrought into 
form and substance, existed as conscious creations in men's 
brains. Concealed within the visible forms of buildings and 
ships — themselves miracles of thought — lie such wonder- 
worlds of invention and discovery as no human life is long 
enough to explore, no human understanding capacious enough 
to hold in knowledge. If, like Asmodeus, we could rive the 
roofs and see woman's part of this prodigious exhibition — the 
things that she has actually created with her brain — what kind 
of display would it be? It is probable that all the intellectual 
energy expended by women from first to last would not have 
sufficed, if directed into the one channel, for the genesis and 
evolution of the modern bicycle. 

I once heard a lady who had playfully competed with 
men in a jumping match gravely attribute her defeat to the 
trammeling of her skirt. Similarly, women are pleased to ex- 
plain their penury of mental achievement by repressive educa- 
tion and custom, and therein they are not altogether in heresy. 
But even in regions where they have ever had the freedom of 
the quarries they have not builded themselves monuments. No- 
body, for example, is holding them from greatness in poetry, 
which needs no special education, and music, in which they 
have always been specially educated; yet where is the great 
poem by a woman? where the great musical composition? 
In the grammar of literature what is the feminine of Homer, 
of Shakspere, of Goethe, of Hugo? What female names 
are the equivalents of the names of Beethoven, Mozart, Cho- 
pin, Wagner? Women are not musicians — they "sing and 
play." In short, if woman had no better claim to respect and 
affection than her brain; no sweeter charms than those of her 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

reason; no means of suasion but her power upon men's con- 
victions, she would long ago have been "improved off the face 
of the earth." As she is, men accord her such homage as is 
compatible with contempt, such immunities as are consistent 
with exaction; but whereas she is not altogether filled with 
light, and is, moreover, imperfectly reverent, it is but right that 
in obedience to Scriptural injunction she keep silence in our 
churches while we are worshipping Ourselves. 

She will not have it so, the good, good girl; as moral as 
the best of us, she will be as intellectual as the rest of us. She 
will have out her little taper and set the rivers of thought all 
ablaze, legging it over the land from stream to stream till all 
are fired. She will widen her sphere, forsooth, herself no wider 
than before. It is not enough that we have edified her a ped- 
estal and perform impossible rites in celebration of her altitude 
and distinction. It does not suffice that with never a smile we 
assure her that she is the superior sex — a whopper by the repe- 
tition whereof certain callow youth among us have incurred 
the divine vengeance of belief. It does not satisfy her that she 
is indubitably gifted with pulchritude and an unquestionable 
genius for its embellishing; that Nature has endowed her with 
a prodigious knack at accroachment, whereby the male of her 
species is lured to a suitable doom. No ; she has taken unto her- 
self in these evil days that "intelHgent discontent" which giveth 
its beloved fits. To her flock of graces and virtues she must add 
our one poor ewe lamb of brains. Well, I tell her that intellect 
is a monster which devours beauty ; that the woman of excep- 
tional mind is exceptionally masculine in face, figure, action; 
that in transplanting brains to an unfamiliar soil God leaves 
much of the original earth about the roots. And so with a 
reluctant farewell to Lovely Woman, I humbly withdraw from 

2Q2 



The Opposing Sex 



her presence and hasten to overtake the receding periphery of 
her "sphere." 

One moment more, Mesdames : I crave leave to estop your 
disfavor — which were affliction and calamity — by "defining my 
position" in the words of one of yourselves, who has said of me 
(though with reprehensible exaggeration, believe me) that I 
hate woman and love women — have an acute animosity to your 
sex and adoring each individual member of it. What matters 
my opinion of your understandings so long as I am in bondage 
to your charms? Moreover, there is one service of incompar- 
able utility and dignity for which I esteem you eminently fit — 
to be mothers of men. 



203 



The American 
Sycophant 



The American Sycophant 




N AMERICAN newspaper holds this opinion: 

"If repubhcan government had done nothing 
else than give independence to American charac- 
ter and preserve it from the servility inseparable 
from the allegiance to kings, it would have accomplished a great 
work." 

I do not doubt that the writer of that sentence believes 
that republican government has actually wrought the change in 
human nature which challenges his admiration. He is very 
sure that his countrymen are not sycophants; that before rank 
and power and wealth they stand covered, maintaining "the 
godlike attitude of freedom and a man" and exulting in it. It 
is not true; it is an immeasurable distance from the truth. 
We are as abject toadies as any people on earth — more so 
than any European people of similar civilization. When a for- 
eign emperor, king, prince or nobleman comes among us the 
rites of servility that we execute in his honor are baser than any 
that he ever saw in his own land. When a foreign nobleman's 
prow puts into shore the American shin is pickled in brine to 
welcome him ; and if he come not in adequate quantity those of 
us who can afford the expense go swarming over sea to struggle 
for front places in his attention. In this blind and brutal scramble 
for social recognition in Europe the traveling American toady 
and impostor has many chances of success: he is commonly 
unknown even to ministers and consuls of his own country, and 
these complaisant gentlemen, rather than incur the risk of erring 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

on the wrong side, take him at his own valuation and push him 
in where his obscurity being again in his favor, he is treated with 
kindly toleration, and sometimes a genuine hospitality, to which 
he has no shadow of right nor title, and which, if he were a 
gentleman, he would not accept if it were voluntarily proffered. 
It should be said in mitigation that all this delirious abasement 
in no degree tempers his rancor against the system of which 
the foreign notable is the flower and fruit. He keeps his servil- 
ity sweet by preserving it in the salt of vilification. In the char- 
acter of a blatant blackguard the American snob is so happily 
disguised that he does not know himself. 

An American newspaper once printed a portrait of her 
whom the irreverent Briton had a reprehensible habit of desig- 
nating colloquially as "The Old Lady." But the editor in 
question did not so designate her — ^his simple American man- 
hood and republican spirit would not admit that she was a lady. 
So he contented himself with labeling the portrait "Her Most 
Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria." This incident raises an 
important question. 

Important Question Raised by This Incident: Is it better 
to be a subject and a man, or a citizen and a flunkey? — to 
own the sway of a "gory tyrant" and retain one's self-respect, 
or dwell, a "sovereign elector," in the land of liberty and 
disgrace it? 

However it may be customary for English newspapers to 
designate the English sovereign, they are at least not addicted 
to sycophancy in designating the rulers of other countries than 
their own. Hiey would not say "His Abracadabral Humpti- 
dumptiness Emperor William," nor "His Pestilency the 
Speaker of the American House of Representatives." They 
would not think of calling even the most ornately self-bemed- 

208 



The American Sycophant 



aled American sovereign elector "His Badgesty. "Of a foreign 
nobleman they do not say "His Lordship;" they will not 
admit that he is a lord ; nor when speaking of their own noble- 
men do they spell "lord" with a capital L, as we do. In brief, 
when mentioning foreign dignitaries, of whatever rank in their 
own countries, the English press is simply and serviceably de- 
scriptive: the king is a king, the queen a queen, the jack a 
jack. We use "another kind of common sense." At the very 
foundation of our political system lies the denial of hereditary 
and artificial rank. Our fathers created this government as a 
protest against all that, and all that it implies. They virtually 
declared that kings and noblemen could not breathe here, and 
no American loyal to the principles of the Revolution which 
made him one will ever say in his own country "Your Maj- 
esty'* or "Your Lordship" — the words would choke him and 
they ought. 

There are a few of us who keep the faith, who do not bow 
the knee to Baal, who hold fast to what is high and good in 
the doctrine of political equality; in whose hearts the altar- 
fires of rational liberty are kept aglow, beaconing the darkness 
of that illimitable inane where their countrymen, inaccessible 
to the light, wander witless in the bogs of political unreason, 
alternately adoring and damning the man-made gods of their 
own stature. Of that bright band fueling the bale-fires of po- 
litical consistency I can not profess myself a member in good 
standing. In view of this general recreancy and treason to the 
principles that our fathers established by the sword — having 
in constant observation this almost universal hospitality to the 
solemn nonsense of hereditary rank and unearned distinction, 
my faith in practical realization of republican ideals is small, 
and I falter in the work of their maintenance in the interest of 

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The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

a people for whom they are too good. Seeing that we are 
immune to none of the evils besetting monarchies, excepting 
those for which we secretly yearn; that inequality of fortune 
and unjust allotment of honors are as conspicuous among us as 
elsewhere ; that the tyranny of individuals is as intolerable, and 
that of the public more so; that the law's majesty is a dream 
and its failure a fact — Shearing everywhere the footfalls of dis- 
order and the watchwords of anarchy, I despair of the repub- 
lic, and catch in every breeze that blows "a cry prophetic of its 
fall." 

I have seen a vast crowd of Americans change color like a 
field of waving grain, as it uncovered to do such base homage to 
a petty foreign princess as in her own country she had never re- 
ceived. I have seen full-grown, self-respecting American 
citizens tremble and go speechless when spoken to by the Em- 
peror of Brazil. I have seen a half-dozen American gentlemen 
in evening clothes trying to outdo one another in the profundity 
of their bows in the presence of the nigger King of Hawaii. I 
have not seen a Chinese "Earl" borne in a chair by four Amer- 
icans officially detailed for the disgraceful service, but it was 
done, and did not evoke a hiss of disapproval. And I did not 
— thank Heaven! — observe the mob of American "simple re- 
publicans" that dogged the heels of a disreputable little 
Frenchman who is a count by courtesy only, and those of an 
English duke quietly attending to his business of making a 
living by being a married man. Hie republican New World 
is no less impested with servility than the monarchial Old. One 
form of government may be better than another for this pur- 
pose or for that; all are alike in the futility of their influence 
upon human character. None can affect man's instinctive 
abasement in the contemplation of power and rank. 

210 



The American Sycophant 



Not only are we no less sycophantic than the people of 
monarchial countries; we are more so. We grovel before 
their exalted personages, and perform in addition a special 
prostration at the clay feet of our own idols — which they do 
not revere. The typical "subject," hat-in-hand to his sovereign 
and his nobleman, is a less shameful figure than the "citizen" 
executing his genuflexion before the public of which he is him- 
self a part. No European court journal, no European courtier, 
was ever more abject in subservience to the sovereign than are 
the American newspaper and the American politician in flat- 
tery of the people. Between the courtier and the demagogue 
I see nothing to choose. They are moved by the same sentiment 
and fired by the same hope. Their method is flattery, and their 
purpose profit. Their adulation is not a testimony to character, 
but a tribute to power, or the shadow of power. If this country 
were governed by its criminal idiots we should have the same 
attestations of their goodness and wisdom, the same competi- 
tion for their favor, the same solemn doctrine that their voice 
is the voice of God. Our children would be brought up to 
believe that an Idiotocracy is the only natural and rational form 
of government. And for my part I'm not at all sure that it 
would not be a pretty good political system, as political systems 
go. I have always, however, cherished a secret faith in Smith- 
ocracy, which seems to combine the advantages of both the 
monarchial and the republican idea. If all the oflices were held 
for life by Smiths — the senior John being President — we 
should have a settled and orderly succession to allay all fears 
of anarchy and a sufficiently wide eligibility to feed the fires of 
patriotic ambition. All could not be Smiths, but many could 
marry into the family. 

The Harrison "progress" left its heritage of shame, whereof 

211 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

each abaser would gladly have washed the hands of him in his 
neighbor's basin. All this was in due order of Nature, and 
was to have been expected. It was a phenomenon of the same 
character as, in the loves of the low, the squabbling conse- 
quent upon satiety and shame. We could not slink out of 
sight; we could deny our sycophancy, albeit we might give it 
another name ; but we could somewhat medicine our damaged 
self-esteem by dealing damnation 'round on one another. The 
blush of shame turned easily to the glow of indignation, and 
many a hot hatred was kindled at the rosy flame of self- 
contempt. Persons conscious of having dishonored themselves 
are doubly sensitive to any indignity put upon them by others. 
The vices and follies of human nature are interdependent; 
they do not move alone, nor are they singly aroused to activity. 
In my judgment, this entire incident of the President's 
"tour" was infinitely discreditable to President and people. I 
do not go into the question of his motive in making it. Be that 
what it may, the manner of it seems to me an outrage upon all 
the principles and sentiments underlying republican institutions. 
In all but the name it was a "royal progress" — the same costly 
ostentation, the same civic and military pomp, the same solemn 
and senseless adulation, the same abasement of spirit of the 
Many before the One. And according to republican tradi- 
tions, ten thousand times a year affirmed, in every way in 
which affirmation is possible, we fondly persuade ourselves, as 
a true faith in the hearts of our hearts, that the One is the 
inferior of the Many ! And it is no mere political catch-phrase : 
he IS their servant ; he is their creature ; all that in him to which 
they grovel (dignifying and justifying their instinctive and in- 
herited servility by names as false as anything in ceremonial 
imposture) they themselves have made, as truly as the heathen 

212 



The American Sycophant 



has made the wooden god before which he performs his 
unmanly rite. It is precisely this thing — the superiority of the 
people to their servants — that constitutes, and was by our fathers 
understood to constitute, the essential, fundamental differ- 
ence between the monarchial system which they uprooted and 
the democratic one which they planted in its stead. Deluded 
men ! how little they guessed the length and strength and vital- 
ity of the roots left in the soil of the centuries when their noxious 
harvestage of mischievous institutions had been cast as rubbish 
to the void ! 

I am no contestant for forms of government — no believer 
in either the practical value or the permanence of any that has 
yet been devised. That all men are created equal, in the best 
and highest sense of the phrase, I hold ; not as I observe it held 
by others, but as a living faith. That an officeholder is a serv- 
ant of the people; that I am his political superior, owing him 
no deference, and entitled to such deference from him as may 
be serviceable to keep him in mind of his subordination — these 
are propositions which command my assent, which I jeel to be 
true and which determine the character of my personal relations 
with those whom they concern. That I should give my hand, 
or bend my neck, or uncover my head to any man in homage to 
or recognition of his office, great or small, is to me simply incon- 
ceivable. These tricks of servility with the softened names are 
the vestiges of an involuntary allegiance to power extraneous to 
the performer. They represent in our American life obedience 
and propitiation in their most primitive and odious forms. The 
man who speaks of them as manifestations of a proper respect 
for "the President's great office" is either a rogue, a dupe or a 
journalist. They come to us out of a fascinating but terrible 
past as survivals of servitude. They speak a various language 

213 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

of oppression, and the superstition of man-worship; they carry 
forward the traditions of the sceptre and the lash. Through 
the plaudits of the people may be heard always the faint, far 
cry of the beaten slave. 

Respect? Respect the good. Respect the wise. Respect 
the dead. Let the President look to it that he belongs to one 
of these classes. His going about the country in gorgeous state 
and barbaric splendor as the guest of a thieving corporation, 
but at our expense — shining and dining and swining — unsoul- 
ing himself of clotted nonsense in pickled platitudes calculated 
for the meridian of Coon Hollow, Indiana, but ingeniously 
adapted to each water tank on the line of his absurd "pro- 
gress," does not prove it, and the presumption of his "great 
office" is against him. 

Can you not see, poor misguided "fellow citizens," how 
you permit your political taskmasters to forge leg-chains of 
your follies and load you down with them? Will nothing 
teach you that all this fuss-and-feathers, all this ceremony, all 
this official gorgeousness and brass-banding, this "manifestation 
of a proper respect for the nation's head" has no decent place 
in American life and American politics? Will no experience 
open your stupid eyes to the fact that these shows are but 
absurd imitations of royalty, to hold you silly while you are 
plundered by the managers of the performance? — that while 
you toss your greasy caps in air and sustain them by the ascend- 
ing current of your senseless hurrahs the programmers are going 
through your blessed pockets and exploiting your holy dollars? 
No; you feel secure; "power is of the People," and you can 
effect a change of robbers every four years. Inestimable priv- 
ilege — to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! 
And you can not even choose among the lean leeches, but must 

214 



The American Sycophant 



accept those designated by the programmers and showmen who 
have the reptiles on tap! But then you are not "subjects;" 
you are "citizens" — there is much in that. Your tyrant is not 
a "King;" he is a "President." He does not occupy a 
"throne," but a "chair." He does not succeed to it by inherit- 
ance; he is pitchforked into it by the boss. Altogether, you 
are distinctly better off than the Russian mujik who wears his 
shirt outside his trousers and has never shaken hands with the 
Czar in all his life. 

I hold that kings and noblemen can not breathe in America. 
When they set foot upon our soil their kingship and their no- 
bility fall away from them like the chains of a slave in Eng- 
land. Whatever a man may be in his own country, here he is 
but a man. My countrymen may do as they please, lickspittling 
the high and mighty of other nations even to the filling of their 
spiritual bellies, but I make a stand for simple American man- 
hood. I will meet no man on this soil who expects from me a 
greater deference than I could properly accord to the President 
of my own country. My allegiance to republican institutions 
is slack through lack of faith in them as a practical system of 
governing men as men are. All the same, I will call no man 
"Your Majesty," nor "Your Lordship." For me to meet in 
my own country a king or a nobleman would require as much 
preliminary negotiation as an official interview between the 
Mufti of Moosh and the Ahkoond of Swat. The form of sal- 
utation and the style and title of address would have to be 
settled definitively and with precision. With some of my most 
esteemed and patriotic friends the matter is more simple; their 
generosity in concession fills me with admiration and their for- 
bearance in exaction challenges my astonishment as one of the 
seven wonders of American hospitality. In fancy I see the 

215 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

ceremony of their "pi'^sentation" and as examples of simple 
republican dignity I commend their posture to the youth of this 
fair New World, inviting particular attention to the grand, 
bold curves of character shown in the outlines of the Human 
Ham. 



216 



A Dissertation 
on Dogs .... 



A Dissertation on Dogs 




F ALL anachronisms and survivals, the love of the 
dog, is the most reasonless. Because, some thousands 
of years ago, when we wore other skins than our 
own and sat enthroned upon our haunches, tear- 
ing tangles of tendons from raw bones with our teeth, the dog 
ministered purveyorwise to our savage needs, we go on cherish- 
ing him to this day, when his only function is to lie sun-soaken 
on a door mat and insult us as we pass in and out, enamored of 
his fat superfluity. One dog in a thousand earns his bread — and 
takes beefsteak; the other nine hundred and ninety-nine we 
maintain, by cheating the poor, in the style suitable to their 
state. 

The trouble with the modern dog is that he is the same old 
dog. Not an inch has the rascal advanced along the line of 
evolution. We have ceased to squat upon our naked haunches 
and gnaw raw bones, but this companion of the childhood of 
the race, this vestigial remnant of juventus mundi, this dismal 
anachronism, this veteran inharmony of the scheme of things, 
the dog, has abated no jot nor tittle of his unthinkable objection- 
ableness since the morning stars sang together and he had sat 
up all night to deflate a lung at the performance. Possibly he 
may some time be improved otherwise than by effacement, but 
at present he is still in that early stage of reform that is not in- 
compatible with a mouthful of reformer. 

The dog is a detestable quadruped. He knows more ways 
to be unmentionable than can be suppressed in seven languages. 

219 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essay^s 

The word "dog" is a term of contempt the world over. Poets 
have sung and prosaists have prosed of the virtues of individual 
dogs, but nobody has had the hardihood to eulogize the species. 
No man loves the Dog; he loves his own dog or dogs, and 
there he stops; the force of perverted affection can no further 
go. He loves his own dog partly because that thrifty creature, 
ever cadging when not maurauding, tickles his vanity by fawn- 
ing upon him as the visible source of steaks and bones; and 
partly because the graceless beast insults everybody else, harm- 
ing as many as he dares. The dog is an encampment of fleas, 
and a reservoir of sinful smells. He is prone to bad manners 
as the sparks fly upward. He has no discrimination; his loy- 
alty is given to the person that feeds him, be the same a black- 
guard or a murderer's mother. He fights for his master without 
regard to the justice of the quarrel — ^wherein he is no better 
than a patriot or a paid soldier. There are men who are proud 
of a dog's love — and dogs love that kind of men. There are 
men who, having the privilege of loving women, insult them by 
loving dogs; and there are women who forgive and respect 
their canine rivals. Women, I am told, are true cynolaters; 
they adore not only dogs, but Dog — not only their own horrible 
little beasts, but those of others. But women will love any- 
thing ; they love men who love dogs. I sometimes wonder how 
it is that of all our women among whom the dog fad is prev- 
alent none have incurred the husband fad, or the child fad. 
Possibly there are exceptions, but it seems to be a rule that 
the female heart which has a dog in it is without other lodgers. 
There is not, I suppose, a very wild and importunate demand 
for accommodation. For my part, I do not know which is 
the less desirable, the tenant or the tenement. There are dogs 
that submit to be kissed by women base enough to kiss them; 

220 



A Dissertation on Dogs 



but they have a secret, coarse revenge. For the dog is a joker, 
withal, gifted with as much humor as is consistent with biting. 

Miss Louise Imogen Guiney has repHed to Mrs. Meynell's 
proposal to abolish the dog — a proposal which Miss Guiney 
has the originality to call "original." Divested of its "litera- 
ture," Miss Guiney's plea for the defendant consists, essen- 
tially, of the following assertions : ( 1 ) Dogs are whatever 
their masters are. (2) They bite only those who fear them. 
(3) Really vicious dogs are not found nearer than Constan- 
tinople. (4) Only wronged dogs go mad, and hydrophobia 
is retaliation. (5) In actions for damages for dog-bites judi- 
cial prejudice is against the dog. (6) "Dogs are continually 
saving children from death." (7) Association with dogs be- 
gets piety, tenderness, mercy, loyalty, and so forth; in brief, 
the dog is an elevating influence : "to walk modestly at a dog's 
heels is a certificate of merit!" As to that last, if Miss Guiney 
had ever observed the dog himself walking modestly at the 
heels of another dog she would perhaps have wished that it 
was not the custom of her sex to seal the certificate of merit with 
a kiss. 

In all this absurd woman's statements, thus fairly epito- 
mized, there is not one that is true — not one of which the essen- 
tial falsity is not evident, obvious, conspicuous to even the most 
delinquent observation. Yet with the smartness and smirk of a 
graduating seminary girl refuting Epicurus she marshals them 
against the awful truth that every year in Europe and the 
United States alone more than five thousand human beings die 
of hydrophobia — a fact which her controversial conscience does 
not permit her to mention. The names on this needless death- 
roll are mostly those of children, the sins of whose parents in 
cherishing their own hereditary love of dogs is visited upon their 

221 



The Shadoiv on the Dial and other Essa'^s 

children because they have not the intelHgence and agihty to 
get out of the way. Or perhaps they lack that tranquil courage 
upon which Miss Guiney relies to avert the czinine tooth from 
her own inedible shank. 

Finally this amusing illogician, this type and example of 
the female controversialist, has the hardihood to hope that there 
may be fathers who can see their children die the horrible death 
of hydrophobia without wishing "to exile man's best ideal of 
fidelity from the hearthstones of civilization.'* If we must have 
an "ideal of fidelity" why not find it, not in the dog that kills 
the child, but in the father that kills the dog. The profit of 
maintaining a standard and pattern of the virtues (at consid- 
erable expense in the case of this insatiable canine consumer) 
may be great, but are we so hard pushed that we must go to the 
animals for it? In life and letters are there no men and women 
whose names kindle enthusiasm and emulation? Is fidelity, is 
devotion, is self-sacrifice unknown among ourselves? As a 
model of the higher virtues why will not one's mother serve at 
a pinch? And what is the matter with Miss Guiney herself? 
She is faithful, at least to dogs, whatever she may be to the 
hundreds of American children inevitably foredoomed to a 
death of unthinkable agony. 

There is perhaps a hope that when the sun's returning flame 
shall gild the hither end of the thirtieth century this savage and 
filthy brute, the dog, will have ceased to "banquet on through 
a whole year" of human fat and lean ; that he will have been 
gathered to his variously unworthy fathers to give an account 
of the deeds done in body of man. In the meantime, those 
of us who have not the enlightened understanding to be enam- 
ored of him may endure with such fortitude as we can com- 
mand his feats of tooth among the shins and throats of those 

222 



A Dissertation on Dogs 



who have; we ourselves are so few that there is a strong 
numerical presumption of personal immunity. 

It is well to have a clear understanding of such inconveni- 
ences as may be expected to ensue from dog-bites. That incon- 
veniences and even discomforts do sometimes flow from, or at 
least follow, the mischance of being bitten by dogs, even the 
sturdiest champion of "man's best friend" will admit when not 
heated by controversy. True, he is indisposed to sympathy 
for those incurring the inconveniences and discomforts, but 
against apparent incompassion may be offset his indubitable 
sympathy with the dog. No one is altogether heartless. 

Amongst the several disadvantages of a close personal con- 
nection with the canine tooth, the disorder known as hydropho- 
bia has long held an undisputed primacy. The existence of this 
ailment is attested by so many witnesses, many of whom, be- 
longing to the profession of medicine, speak with a certain au- 
thority, that even the breeders and lovers of snap-dogs are 
compelled reluctantly to concede it, though as a rule they 
stoutly deny that it is imparted by the dog. In their view, hy- 
drophobia is a theory, not a condition. The patient imagines 
himself to have it, and acting upon that unsupported assumption 
or hypothesis, suffers and dies in the attempt to square his con- 
duct with his opinions. 

It seems there is firmer ground for their view of the matter 
than the rest of us have been willing to admit. There is such 
a thing, doubtless, as hydrophobia proper, but also there is such 
another thing as pseudo-hydrophobia, or hydrophobia im- 
proper. 

Pseudo-hydrophobia, the physicians explain, is caused by 
fear of hydrophobia. Hie patient, having been chewed by a 
healthy and harmless dog, broods upon his imaginary peril, 

223 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

solicitously watches his imaginary symptoms, and, finally, per- 
suading himself of their reality, puts them on exhibition, as he 
understands them. He runs about (when permitted) on his 
hands and knees, growls, barks, howls, and in default of a tail 
wags the part of him where it would be if he had one. In a 
few days he is gone before, a victim to his lack of confidence 
in man's best friend. 

The number of cases of pseudo-hydrophobia, relatively, 
to those of true hydrophobia, is not definitely known, the medi- 
cal records having been imperfectly made, and never collated; 
champions of the snap-dog, as intimated, believe it is many to 
nothing. That being so (they argue), the animal is entirely 
exonerated, and leaves the discussion without a stain upon his 
reputation. 

But that is feeble reasoning. Even if we grant their prem- 
ises we can not embrace their conclusion. In the first place, it 
hurts to be bitten by a dog, as the dog himself audibly confesses 
when bitten by another dog. Furthermore, pseudo-hydrophobia 
is quite as fatal as if it were a legitimate product of the bite, 
not a result of the terror which that mischance inspires. 

Human nature being what it is, and well known to the dog 
to be what it is, we have a right to expect that the creature will 
take our weaknesses into consideration — that he will respect our 
addiction to reasonless panic, even as we respect his when, as 
we commonly do, we refrain from attaching tinware to his tail. 
A dog that runs himself to death to evade a kitchen utensil 
which could not possibly harm him, and which if he did not flee 
would not pursue, is the author of his own undoing in precisely 
the same sense as is the victim of pseudo-hydrophobia. He is 
slain by a theory, not a condition. Yet the wicked boy that set 
him going is not blameless, and no one would be so zealous and 

224 



A Dissertation on Dogs 



strenuous in his prosecution as the cynolater, the adorer of dogs, 
the person who holds them guiltless of pseudo-hydrophobia. 

Mr. Nicholas Smith, while United States Consul at Liege, 
wrote, or caused to be written, an official report, wickedly, will- 
fully and maliciously designed to abridge the privileges, aug- 
ment the ills and impair the honorable status of the domestic 
dog. In the very beginning of this report Mr. Smith manifests 
his animus by stigmatizing the domestic dog as an "hereditary 
loafer;" and having hurled the allegation, affirms "the dawn 
of a [Belgian] new era" wherein the pampered menial will loaf 
no more. There is to be no more sun-soaking on door mats 
having a southern exposure, no more usurpation of the warmest 
segment of the family circle, no more successful personal solici- 
tation of cheer at the domestic board. The dog's place in the 
social scale is no longer to be determined by consideration of 
sentiment, but will be the result of cold commercial calculation, 
and so fixed as best to serve the ends of industrial expediency. 
All this in Belgium, where the dog is already in active service 
as a beast of burden and draught; doubtless the transition to 
that humble condition from his present and immemorial social 
elevation in less advanced countries will be slow and character- 
ized by bitter factional strife. America, especially, though 
ever accessible to the infection of new and profitable ideas, will 
be singularly slow to accept so radical a subversion of a social 
superstructure that almost may be said to rest upon the domestic 
dog as a basic verity. 

The dogs are our only true "leisure class" (for even the 
tramps are sometimes compelled to engage in such simple indus- 
tries as are possible within the "precincts" of the county jail) 
and we are justly proud of them. They toil not, neither spin, 
yet Solomon in all his glory was not a dog. Instead of making 

225 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

them hewers of wood and drawers of water, it would be more 
consonant with the Anglomaniacal and general Old World 
spirit, now so dominant in the councils of the nation, to make 
them "hereditary legislators." And Mr. Smith must permit me 
to add, with a special significance, that history records an in- 
stance of even a horse making a fairly good Consul. 

Mr. Smith avers with obvious and impudent satisfaction 
that in Liege twice as many draught dogs as horses are seen 
in the streets, attached to vehicles. He regards "a gaily painted 
cart" drawn by "a well fed dog" and driven by a well fed 
(and gaily painted) woman as a "pleasing vision." I do not; 
I should prefer to see the dog sitting at the receipt of steaks and 
chops and the lady devoting herself to the amelioration of the 
condition of the universe, and the manufacture of poetry and 
stories that are not true. A more pleasing vision, too, one en- 
deared to eye and heart by immemorial use and wont, is that of 
stranger and dog indulging in the pleasures of the chase — 
stranger a little ahead — while the woman in the case manifests 
a characteristically compassionate solicitude lest the gentleman's 
trousers do not match Fido's mustache. It is, indeed, impossible 
to regard with any degree of approval the degradation to com- 
mercial utility of two so noble animals as Dog and Woman; 
and if Man had joined them together by driving-reins I should 
hope that God would put them asunder, even, if the reins were 
held by Dog. There would no doubt be a distinct gain as 
well as a certain artistic fitness in unyoking the strong-minded 
female of our species from the Chariot of Progress and yoking 
her to the apple-cart or fish-wagon, and — but that is another 
story; the imminence of the draughtwomem is not fore- 
shadowed in the report of our Consul at Liege. 

Mr. Smith's estimate of the number of dogs in this country 

226 



A Dissertation on Dogs 



at 7,000,000 is a "conservative" one, it must be confessed, and 
can hardly have been based on observations by moonlight in a 
suburban village; his estimate of the effective strength of the 
average dog at 500 pounds is probably about right, as will be 
attested by any intelligent boy w^ho in campaigns against 
orchards has experienced detention by the Cerberi of the places. 
Taking his own figures Mr. Smith calculates that we have in 
this country 3,500,000,000 pounds of "idle dog power." But 
this statement is more ingenious than ingenuous; it gives, as 
doubtless it was intended to give, the impression that we have 
only idle dogs, whereas of all mundane forces the domestic dog 
is most easily stirred to action. His expense of energy in pur- 
suit of the harmless, necessary flea, for example, is prodigious; 
and he is not infrequently seen in chase of his own tail, with an 
activity scarcely inferior. If there is anything worth while in ac- 
cepted theories of the conversion and conservation of force these 
gigantic energies are by no means wasted ; they appear as heat, 
light and electricty, modifying climate, reducing gas bills and 
assisting in propulsion of street cars. Even in baying the moon 
and insulting visitors and bypassers the dog releases a certain 
amount of vibratory force which through various mutations of 
its wave-length, may do its part in cooking a steak or gratifying 
the olfactory nerve by throwing fresh perfume on the violet. 
Evidently the commercial advantages of deposing the dog from 
the position of Exalted Personage and subduing him to that of 
Motor would not be all clear gain. He would no longer have 
the spirit to send, Whitmanwise, his barbarous but beneficent 
yawp over the housetops, nor the leisure to throw off vast quan- 
tities of energy by centrifugal efforts at the conquest of his tail. 
As to the fleas, he would accept them with apathetic satisfaction 
as preventives of thought upon his fallen fortunes. 

227 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

Having observed with attention and considered with seri- 
ousness the London Daily Neivs declares its conviction that 
the dog, as we have the happiness to know him, is dreadfully 
bored by civilization. This is one of the gravest accusations 
that the friends of progress and light have been called out to 
meet — a challenge that it is impossible to ignore and unprofit- 
able to evade; for the dog as we have the happiness to know 
him is the only dog that we have the happiness really to know. 
The wolf is hardly a dog within the meaning of the law, nor is 
the scalp-yielding coyote, whether he howls or merely sings 
and plays the piano; moreover, these are beyond the pale of 
civilization and outside the scope of our sympathies. 

With the dog it is different. His place is among us ; he is 
with us and of us — a part of our life and love. If we are main- 
taining and promoting a condition of things that gives him "that 
tired feeling" it is befitting that we mend our ways lest, shaking 
the carpet dust from his feet and the tenderloin steaks from his 
teeth, he depart from our midst and connect himself with the 
enchanted life of the thrilling barbarian. We can not afford to 
lose him. Hie cynophobes may call him a "survival" and sneer 
at his exhausted mandate — albeit, as Darwin points out, they 
are indebted for their sneer to his own habit of uncovering his 
teeth to bite ; they may seek to cast opprobrium upon the nature 
of our affection for him by pronouncing it hereditary — a bequest 
from our primitive ancestors, for whom he performed important 
service in other ways than depriving visitors of their tendons; 
but quite the same we should miss him at his meal time and in 
the (but for him) silent watches of the night. We should miss 
his bark and his bite, the feel of his forefeet upon our shirt- 
fronts, the frou-frou of his dusty sides against our nether habili- 
ments. More than all, we should miss and mourn that visible 

228 



A Dissertation on Dogs 



yearning for chops and steaks, which he has persuaded us to 
accept as the lovelight of his eye and a tribute to our personal 
worth. We must keep the dog, and to that end find means to 
abate his weariness of us and our ways. 

Doubtless much might be done to reclaim our dogs from 
their uncheerful state of mind by abstention from debate on im- 
perialism ; by excluding them from the churches, at least during 
the sermons ; by keeping them off the streets and out of hearing 
when rites of prostration are in performance before visiting no- 
tables ; by forbidding anyone to read aloud in their hearing the 
sensational articles in the newspapers, and by educating them 
to the belief that Labor and Capital are illusions. A limitation 
of the annual output of popular novels would undoubtedly re- 
duce the dejection, which could be still further mitigated by 
abolition of the more successful magazines. If the dialect story 
or poem could be prohibited, under severe penalties, the sum of 
night-howling (erroneously attributed to lunar influence) 
would experience an audible decrement, which, also, would en- 
able the fire department to augment its own uproar without re- 
proach. There is, indeed, a considerable number of ways in 
which we might effect a double reform — promoting the advan- 
tage of Man, as well as medicating the mental fatigue of Dog. 
For another example, it would be "a boon and a blessing to 
man" if Society would put to death, or at least banish, the mill- 
man or manufacturer who persists in apprising the entire com- 
munity many times a day by means of a steam whistle that it is 
time for his oppressed employees (every one of whom has 
a gold watch) to go to work or to leave off. Such things 
not only make a dog tired, they make a man mad. They 
answer with an accented affirmative Truthful James' plaintive 
inquiry, 

229 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essay^s 

"Is civilization a failure. 

Or is the Caucasian played out?'* 

Unquestionably, from his advantageous point of view as a 
looker-on at the gcune, the dog is justified in the conviction that 
they are. 



230 



The Ancestral 
Bona .... 



The Ancestral Bond 




WELL-KNOWN citizen of Ohio once dis- 
covered another man of the same name exactly re- 
sembling him, and writing a "hand" which, includ- 
ing the signature, he was unable to distinguish 
from his own. The two men were unable to discover any blood 
relationship between them. It is nevertheless almost absolutely 
certain that a relationship existed, though it may have been so 
remote a degree that the familiar term "forty-second cousin" 
would not have exaggerated the slendemess of the tie. The 
phenomena of heredity have been inattentively noted; its laws 
are imperfectly understood, even by Herbert Spencer and the 
prophets. My own small study in this amazing field convinces 
me that a man is the sum of his ancestors; that his character, 
moral and intellectual, is determined before his birth. His en- 
vironment with all its varied suasions, its agencies of good and 
evil; breeding, training, interest, experience and the rest of 
it — have little to do with the matter and can not alter the sen- 
tence passed upon him at conception, compelling him to be 
what he is. 

Man is the hither end of an immeasurable line extending 
back to the ultimate Adam — or, as we scientists prefer to name 
him, Protoplasmos. Man travels, not the mental road that he 
would, but the one that he must — ^is pushed this way and that 
by the resultant of all the forces behind him; for each mem- 
ber of the ancestral line, though dead, yet pusheth. In one of 
what Dr. Nolmes calls his "medicated novels," The Guardian 

233 



The Shadofv on the Dial and other Essays 

Angel, this truth is most admirably and lucidly set forth with 
abundant instance and copious exposition. Upon another work 
of his, Elsie Venner — in which he erroneously affirms the 
influence of circumstance and environment — let us lay a char- 
itable hand and fling it into the fire. 

Clearly all one's ancestors have not equal power in shaping 
his character. Conceiving them, according to our figure, as 
arranged in line behind him and influential in the ratio of their 
individuality, we shall get the best notion of their method by 
supposing them to have taken their places in an order somewhat 
independent of chronology and a little different from their ar- 
rangement behind his brother. Immediately at his back, with 
a controlling hand (a trifle skinny) upon him, may stand his 
great-grandmother, while his father may be many removes 
arear. Or the place of power may be held by some fine old 
Asian gentleman who flourished before the confusion of tongues 
on the plain of Shinar; or by some cave-dweller who polished 
the bone of life in Mesopotamia and was perhaps a respectable 
and honest troglodyte. 

Sometimes a whole platoon of ancestors appears to have 
been moved backward or forward, en hloc, not, we may be 
sure, capriciously, but in obedience to some law that we do not 
understand. I know a man to whose character not an ancestor 
since the seventeenth century has contributed an element. In- 
tellectually he is a contemporary of John Dryden, whom natu- 
rally he reveres as the greatest of poets. I know another who 
has inherited his handwriting from his great-grandfather, al- 
though he has been trained to the Spencerian system and tried 
hard to acquire it. Furthermore, his handwriting follows the 
same order of progressive development as that of his great- 
grandfather. At the age of twenty he wrote exactly as his an- 

234 



The Ancestral Bond 



cestor did at the same age, and, although at forty-five his chi- 
rography is nothing Hke what it was even ten years ago, it is 
accurately like his great-grandfather's at forty-five. It was 
only five years ago that the discovery of some old letters showed 
him how his great-grandfather wrote, and accounted for the 
absolute dissimilarity of his own handwriting to that of any 
known member of his family. 

To suppose that such individual traits as the configuration 
of the body, the color of the hair and eyes, the shape of hands 
and feet, the thousand-and-one subtle characteristics that make 
family resemblances are transmissible, and that the form, texture 
and capacities of the brain which fix the degree of natural intel- 
lect, are not transmissible, is illogical and absurd. We see that 
certain actions, such as gestures, gait, and so forth, resulting 
from the most complex concurrences of brain, nerves and 
muscles, are hereditary. Is it reasonable to suppose that the 
brain alone of all the organs performs its work according to its 
own sweet will, free from congenital tendencies? Is it not a 
familiar fact that racial characteristics are persistent? — that one 
race is stupid and indocile, another quick and intelligent? Does 
not each generation of a race inherit the intellectual qualities of 
the preceding generation? How could this be true of genera- 
tions and not of individuals? 

As to stirpiculture, the intelligent and systematic breeding 
of men and women with a view to improvement of the species 
— it is a thing of the far future. It is hardly in sight. Yet, 
what splendid possibilities it carries! Two or three generations 
of as careful breeding as we bestow on horses, dogs and 
pigeons would do more good than all the penal, reformatory 
and educating agencies of the world accomplish in a thousand 
years. It is the one direction in which human effort to "elevate 

235 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

the race" can be assured of a definitive, speedy and adequate 
success. It is hardly better than nonsense to prate of any good 
coming to the race through (for example) medical science, 
which is mainly concerned in reversing the beneficent operation 
of natural laws and saving the unfittest to perpetuate their un- 
fitness. Our entire system of charities is open to the same objec- 
tion; it cares for the incapables whom Nature is trying to 
"weed out." This not only debases the race physically, intel- 
lectually and morally, but constantly increases the rate of de- 
basement. The proportion of criminals, paupers and the vari- 
ous kinds of "inmates" of charitable institutions augments its 
horrible percentage yearly. On the other hand, our wars de- 
stroy the capable; so thus we make inroads upon the vitality 
of the race from two directions. We preserve the feeble and ex- 
tirpate the strong. He who, in view of this amazing folly can 
believe in a constant, even slow, progress of the human race 
toward perfection ought to be happy. He has a mind whose 
Olympian heights are inaccessible — the Titans of fact can never 
scale them to storm its ancient reign. 



236 



The Right 
to Work 



The Right to Work 




LL kinds of relief, charitable or other, doubtless tend 
to perpetuation of pauperism, inasmuch as paupers 
are thereby kept alive; and living paupers un- 
questionably propagate their unthrifty kind more 
abundantly than dead ones. It is not true, though, that relief 
interferes with Nature's beneficent law of the survival of the 
fittest, for the power to excite sympathy and obtain relief is a 
kind of fitness. I am still a devotee of the homely primitive doc- 
trine that mischance, disability or even unthrift, is not a capital 
crime justly and profitably punishable by starvation. I still re- 
gard the Good Samaritan with a certain toleration and Jesus 
Christ's tenderness to the poor as something more than a policy 
of obstruction. 

If no such thing as an almshouse, a hospital, an asylum or 
any one of the many public establishments for relief of the un- 
fortunate were known the proposal to found one would indu- 
bitably evoke from thousands of throats notes of deprecation 
and predictions of disaster. It would be called Socialism of the 
radical and dangerous kind — of a kind to menace the stability 
of government and undermine the very foundations of organized 
society! Yet who is more truly unfortunate than an able- 
bodied man out of work through no delinquency of will and no 
default of effort? Is hunger to him and his less poignant than 
to the feeble in body and mind whom we support for nothing 
in almshouse or asylum? Are cold and exposure less disagree- 
able to him than to them? Is not his claim to the right to live 

239 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays 

as valid as theirs if backed by the will to pay for life with work? 
And in denial of his claim is there not latent a far greater peril 
to society than inheres in denial of theirs? So unfortunate and 
dangerous a creature as a man willing to work, yet having no 
work to do, should be unknown outside of the literature of sa- 
tire. Doubtless there would be enormous difficulties in devising 
a practicable and beneficent system, and doubtless the reform, 
like all permanent and salutary reforms, will have to grow. 
The growth naturally will be delayed by opposition of the 
workingmen themselves — ^precisely as they oppose prison labor 
from ignorance that labor makes labor. 

It matters not that nine in ten of all our tramps and va- 
grants are such from choice, and irreclaimable degenerates into 
the bargain; so long as one worthy man is out of employment 
and unable to obtain it our duty is to provide it by law. Nay, 
so long as industrial conditions are such that so pathetic a phe- 
nomenon is possible we have not the moral right to disregard 
that possiblity. The right to employment being the right to 
life, its denial is homicide. It should be needless to point out 
the advantages of its concession. It would preserve the life and 
self-respect of him who is needy through misfortune, and supply 
an infallible means of detection of his criminal imitator, who 
could then be dealt with as he deserves, without the lenity that 
finds justification in doubt and compassion. It would diminish 
crime, for an empty stomach has no morals. With a wage rate 
lower than the commercial, it would disturb no private industries 
by luring away their workmen, and with nothing made to sell 
there would be no competition with private products. Properly 
directed, it would give us highways, bridges and embankments 
which we shall not otherwise have. 

It is difficult to say if our laws relating to vagrancy and va- 

240 



The Right to Work 



grants are more cruel or more absurd. If not so atrocious they 
would evoke laughter; if less ridiculous we should read them 
with indignation. Here is an imaginary conversation : 

The Law: It is forbidden to you to rob. It is forbid- 
den to you to steal. It is forbidden to you to beg. 

The Vagrant: Being without money, and denied em- 
ployment, I am compelled to obtain food, shelter and clothing 
in one of these ways, else I shall be hungry and cold. 

The Law : That is no affair of mine. Yet I am consid- 
erate — you are permitted to be as hungry as you like and as 
cold as may suit you. 

The Vagrant : Hungry, yes, and many thanks to you ; 
but if I go naked I am arrested for indecent exposure. You re- 
quire me to wear clothing. 

The Law : You'll admit that you need it. 

The Vagrant : But not that you provide a way for me 
to get it. No one will give me shelter at night ; you forbid me 
to sleep in a straw stack. 

The Law: Ungrateful man! we provide a cell. 

The Vagrant : Even when I obey you, starving all day 
and freezing all night, and holding my tongue with both hands, 
I am liable to arrest for being "without visible means of sup- 
port." 

The Law: A most reprehensible condition. 

The Vagrant: One thing has been overlooked — a 
legal punishment for begging for work. 

The Law : True ; I am not perfect. 



241 



The Right to 
Take Oneself Off 



The Right to Take Oneself Off 




PERSON who loses heart and hope through a 
personal bereavement is like a grain of sand on the 
seashore complaining that the tide has washed a 
neighboring grain out of reach. He is worse, for 
the bereaved grain cannot help itself ; it has to be a grain of sand 
and play the game of tide, win or lose; whereas he can quit — 
by watching his opportunity can "quit a winner." For sometimes 
we do beat "the man who keeps the table" — never in the long 
run, but infrequently and out of small stakes. But this is no 
time to "cash in" and go, for you can not take your little win- 
ning with you. The time to quit is when you have lost a big 
stake, your fool hope of eventual success, your fortitude and 
your love of the game. If you stay in the game, which you are 
not compelled to do, take your losses in good temper and do not 
whine about them. They are hard to bear, but that is no reason 
why you should be. 

But we are told with tiresome iteration that we are "put 
here" for some purpose (not disclosed) and have no right to 
retire until summoned — it may be by small-pox, it may be by 
the bludgeon of a blackguard, it may be by the kick of a cow ; 
the "summoning" Power (said to be the same as the "putting" 
Power) has not a nice taste in the choice of messengers. That 
"argument" is not worth attention, for it is unsupported by 
either evidence or anything remotely resembling evidence. "Put 
here." Indeed! And by the keeper of the table who "runs" 
the "skin game." We were put here by our parents — that is all 

245 



The Shadorv on the Dial and other Essays 

anybody knows about it ; and they had no more authority than 
we, and probably no more intention. 

The notion that we have not the right to take our own Hves 
comes of our consciousness that we have not the courage. It is 
the plea of the coward — his excuse for continuing to Hve when 
he has nothing to hve for — or his provision against such a time 
in the future. If he were not egotist as well as coward he 
would need no excuse. To one who does not regard himself 
as the center of creation and his sorrow as the throes of the 
universe, life, if not worth living, is also not worth leaving. 
The ancient philosopher who was asked why he did not die 
if, as he taught, Hfe was no better than death, replied: 
"Because death is no better than life." We do not know that 
either proposition is true, but the matter is not worth bothering 
about, for both states are supportable — life despite its pleasures 
and death despite its repose. 

It was Robert G. Ingersoll's opinion that there is rather too 
little them too much suicide in the world — that people are so 
cowardly as to live on long after endurance has ceased to be a 
virtue. This view is but a return to the wisdom of the ancients, 
in whose splendid civilization suicide had as honorable place as 
any other courageous, reasonable and unselfish act. Antony, 
Brutus, Cato, Seneca — these were not of the kind of men to do 
deeds of cowardice and folly. TTie smug, self-righteous 
modern way of looking upon the act as that of a craven or a 
lunatic is the creation of priests, Philistines and women. If 
courage is manifest in endurance of profitless discomfort it is 
cowardice to warm oneself when cold, to cure oneself when ill, 
to drive away mosquitoes, to go in when it rains. The "pur- 
suit of happiness," then, is not an "inalienable right," for that 
implies avoidance of pain. No principle is involved in this 

246 



The Right to Take Oneself Off 



matter; suicide is justifiable or not, according to circumstances; 
each case is to be considered on its merits and he having the act 
under advisement is sole judge. To his decision, made with 
whatever light he may chance to have, all honest minds will 
bow. The appellant has no court to which to take his appeal. 
Nowhere is a jurisdiction so comprehensive as to embrace the 
right of condemning the wretched to life. 

Suicide is always courageous. We call it courage in a 
soldier merely to face death — say to lead a forlorn hope — 
although he has a chance of life and a certainty of "glory." 
But the suicide does more than face death; he incurs it, and 
with a certainty, not of glory, but of reproach. If that is not 
courage we must reform our vocabulary. 

True, there may be a higher courage in living than in dying 
— a moral courage greater than physical. The courage of the 
suicide, like that of the pirate, is not incompatible with a selfish 
disregard of the rights and interests of others — a cruel recreancy 
to duty and decency. I have been asked: "Do you not think 
it cowardly when a man leaves his family unprovided for, to 
end his life, because he is dissatisfied with life in general?" No, 
I do not ; I think it selfish and cruel. Is not that enough to say 
of it? Must we distort words from their true meaning in order 
more effectually to damn the act and cover its author with a 
greater infamy? A word means something; despite the maun- 
derings of the lexicographers, it does not mean whatever you 
want it to mean. "Cowardice" means the fear of danger, not 
the shirking of duty. The writer who allows himself as much 
liberty in the use of words as he is allowed by the dictionary- 
maker and by popular consent is a bad writer. He can make no 
impression on his reader, and would do better service at the 
ribbon-counter. 

247 



The Shadow on the Dial and other Essayjs 

The ethics of suicide is not a simple matter; one can not lay 
down laws of universal application, but each case is to be 
judged, if judged at all, with a full knowledge of all the cir- 
cumstances, including the mental and moral make-up of the per- 
son taking his own life — an impossible qualification for judg- 
ment. One's time, race and religion have much to do with it. 
Some people, like the ancient Romans and the modern Japanese, 
have considered suicide in certain circumstances honorable and 
obligatory; among ourselves it is held in disfavor. A man of 
sense will not give much attention to considerations of that kind, 
excepting in so far as they affect others, but in judging weak 
offenders they are to be taken into the account. Speaking 
generally, then, I should say that in our time 2uid country the 
following persons (emd some others) are justified in removing 
themselves, and that to some of them it is a duty : 

One afflicted with a painful or loathsome and incurable 
disease. 

One who is a heavy burden to his friends, with no pro- 
spect of their relief. 

One threatened with permanent insanity. 

One irreclaimably addicted to drunkenness or some sim- 
ilarly destructive or offensive habit. 

One without friends, property, employment or hope. 

One who has disgraced himself. 

Why do we honor the valiant soldier, sailor, fireman ? For 
obedience to duty? Not at all; that alone — without the 
peril — seldom eHcits remark, never evokes enthusiasm. It is 
because he faced without flinching the risk of that supreme 
disaster — or what we feel to be such — death. But look you: 
the soldier braves the danger of death ; the suicide braves death 
itself! The leader of the forlorn hope may not be struck. TTie 

248 



The Right to Take Oneself Off 



sailor who voluntarily goes down with his ship may be picked 
up or cast ashore. It is not certain that the wall will topple 
until the fireman shall have descended with his precious burden. 
But the suicide — his is the foeman that never missed a mark, his 
the sea that gives nothing back; the wall that he mounts bears 
no man's weight. And his, at the end of it all, is the dis- 
honored grave where the wild ass of public opinion 

"Stamps o'er his head but can not break his sleep." 



249 



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